Black Steel
by Sol Winterfang71
Summary: All I know is war and battle. I was bred for it, designed for it. They wanted a 'power house', a new breed of Spartans that couldn't be stopped. All they got was me, but I was more than enough. Until I fell through that damn portal...Now, I'm trapped in an entirely foreign world where combat was a part of daily life here in Remnant. I just might fit in after all... Rated M
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto, Halo, or RWBY.

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Black Steel

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Chapter One

Everything was...quiet; deathly so. The streets were empty of other life forms, inoperable vehicles flipped over and wrecked all along each stretch of building-flanked road. Bullet holes and scorch marks littered the concrete surfaces everywhere in varying degrees; small ones from pistol-type weaponry, large ones from artillary-based cannons, wide sprays of dozens of holes from assault rifles, clusters of larger ones from shotguns, deeply penetrating ones from sniper rifles, debris scattered from explosions. Fires still burned in various areas, remnants of vehicular fuel supplying them or the structures some of them burned within doing the same.

The battle had ended not too long ago, maybe by a few hours, and yet he hadn't run across a single corpse; human or otherwise...

There was no point in trying the radio; the communication towers and relay stations were the first to be taken out. The enemy had struck fast and hard, taking out their communications first and then sealing off their escape routes; specifically, destroying their Pelicans and other forms of aerial and exo-atmospheric transportation. His handler had thrown him into a room and sealed the blast door to ensure that at least _one_ person survived to tell the tale. Not much of a tale to tell, really. It was no different than their other battles. Still, he knew what had attacked the UNSC base...

"..." The Spartan looked up silently as a Covenant Type-52 Troop Carrier, also known as a Phantom, flew overhead, seemingly oblivious to the lone 'super soldier'.

Unlike other Spartans, he was clad in a much heavier suit of MJOLNIR armor than the standard-issue Mark-VI and its variants. When he had been issued the suit shortly after completing his training, his handler had said it was a suit of MJOLNIR Mark-VII '445 Super Wide' armor, though it had a special designation unique to it; 'Olympus'. He also discovered that he had been bred specifically for the suit, being the sole SPARTAN-VI to not only survive the unique surgical and biochemical procedures out of a little under fourty 'applicants', but also because there had only been one Olympus suit ever made; had the others survived, the one to gain the Olympus suit would have been made commander over the small company of SPARTAN-VIs.

From what his handler had told him in the past, they had already been planning on appointing that position to him from the very start due to his 'uniqueness'...

Apart from being far more heavily armored and weighing in at point-seven-five tons, roughly fifteen hundred pounds, the Olympus suit was aesthetically similar to the standard Mark-V MJOLNIR suit; weighing in a little under three-hundred pounds on his own, the Spartan's weight combined with the weight of his armor put him at an approximate total weight of eighteen hundred pounds.

So much weight would have slowed other Spartans down to a brisk lumbering gait from the suit's incredible mass, but he had been bred to be stronger than previous Spartan generations. Thus, he was able to run while wearing the suit, but he could only reach a maximum speed of twenty-one-point-six miles per hour on his own power without injuring himself. From what his handler had told him, it was actually faster than what they had originally estimated, which had only been an average of fifteen miles per hour without causing injury.

The suit was painted a glossy jet black, the helmet bearing a mirrored and polarized ocean blue sliver of a visor that ran across his eyes from one temple to the other. The left side of his armored chest bore the numeric designation '4-1-9' in white. The armor covering his upper body was much heavier and bulkier than standard MJOLNIR armor, the collar rising up a few inches along the back and sides to better protect his neck with an armored 'lip' in the front about where his chin would be. His biceps were encased with a light armor shell while a broad shield-like plate was mounted to the bands, allowing the thick plates to completely cover his biceps and shoulders without limiting his arms' range of motion. His forearms and hands were heavily plated as well with only his index fingers and thumbs left unarmored to keep from interferring with any gun he used while the rest of his fingers were lightly plated with more of the black metal.

His helmet was slightly bulkier than normal from thicker armor plating and more devices built into it, most of them being sensors and communications devices. The heavier-than-normal armor around his midsection, waist, and legs left few 'weak spots' where his black undersuit was exposed without limiting his range of motion too much outside of the suit's immense bulk and weight, allowing him the base movements of any other Spartan. He also had more magnetic strips built into his armor to carry more things such as more ammunition, multiple large weapons, extra equipment, and so on.

If other Spartans were sometimes referred to as living tanks by marines and ODSTs, the Olympus-clad Spartan was a mobile monolith of war and had repeatedly proven himself as such in the brief two years he had been 'active'...

 _"We should get moving."_ His AI partner commented from within his heavily plated shell of a helmet.

Despite the visor's abundance of physical 'blind spots', special sensors built into the helmet and parts of his suit 'filled in' those areas with holographic outlines of every discernable object within his field of view; he could see even the ants crawling across the ground in his 'blind spots' with the HUD's automated zoom-in/out feature that linked with his eyes via the Spartan Neural Interface that had been surgically impanted in the back of his head as a child.

Unlike the 'simpler' version used all throughout the UNSC, his HUD was a little more unique, feeding him data on numerous things tied in with the suit and even more things that the suit's sensors automatically scanned. It had been... _severely_ disorienting when he had first put it on.

Without showing any sign of him even hearing what his AI partner had said, the heavily armored Spartan started walking again, his 'standard-issue' M739 SAW light machine gun grasped firmly in his armor-plated hands as he gradually sped up into a slow jog. His footfalls were like mountains crashing together, the shallowest of identations of his plated footprints left behind in the ashphalt as it cracked slightly from the sheer weight concentrated into singular points upon its surface with each hasty step. Since his AI partner had tagged one of the Sangheili Zealots aboard the Covenant Phantom as it passed overhead, he knew their goal wasn't too far from his position; one-six-five meters from his current position and steadily declining.

 _"There's a break in the over-pass up ahead."_ His AI informed him, making the Spartan narrow his eyes slightly before immediately issuing the subconscious mental command to his armor through the interlinked subsystems of his undersuit and armor via his SNI. Immediately, the thrusters built into his armor behind his shoulders warmed up in preparation along with a couple smaller ones scattered across his heavily armored frame.

Reaching the edge of the broken bridge, the Spartan jumped as high as his armor would allow while the thrusters fired at full power, carrying him across the thirty foot gap to the other end of the bridge. He was airborne for less then three seconds before he touched back down quite heavily on the other side, the Spartan left hunched forward slightly from the weight shift of his momentum being abruptly halted while the thruster jets returned to their inactive states.

Upon reconnecting with the ground, the shock absorbers scattered throughout his suit soaked up the kinetic energy of the impact before using that same energy to replenish any lost energy in the suit's fusion cells, its primary source of power. So long as it was in constant use, the Olympus suit's fusion cells would last almost two to three times longer than those that powered other MJOLNIR armor models.

Only a second after impact, the lone SPARTAN-VI was mobile again, SAW still cradled in his hands. The only sound in the immediate area was the Spartan's own thundering footfalls as he 'jogged' down the road in the direction of his current objective.

 _"One-two-one meters from target. ETA four-five seconds."_ The AI vocalized despite the information being displayed on the Spartan's HUD. Not even twenty seconds later, he encountered enemy resistance.

He didn't even blink as he back-handed a lunging Covenant Spec Ops Sangheili 'Elite' with his left hand, an Energy Sword grasped in the alien's right hand. Weilding his SAW with only his right hand, the Spartan kept running, mowing down the Covenant forces that got caught in his path with bursts of armor-piercing rounds that he had been issued to go with his weapon; he had been meant to be both an immovable object and an unstoppable force, though the cost for him and the suit alone was greater than the cost of four SPARTAN-IVs _and_ their armor together.

Thus, he was the only one, both because he had been the lone survivor of the 'failed' SPARTAN-VI Program's augmentations and also due to the SPARTAN-VI Program's incredibly high cost...

Jumping up and swatting an Elite 'Ranger' out of the air when it tried to avoid being crushed under the 'stampeding' Spartan's feet by taking to the air with its jet pack, the black-armored 'super soldier' continued on his charge without even breaking stride. Plasma shot splashed against his heavy-duty shielding, gradually wearing it down, but the kinetic energy built up from his run was already charging up the auxillary shields, which would buy him enough time for his primary shields to recharge. Jumping up slightly again, the Spartan crushed the front end of a Covenant Ghost under one armor encased foot, shooting the Unggoy 'Grunt' driving it as he landed on the Type-32 Rapid Assault Vehicle. With his next step, he touched back down on the ground just beyond the wrecked hovercraft and kept running.

 _"Six-one meters from target. ETA two-two seconds."_ His AI intoned as the Spartan decimated the crowd of Unggoy, Grunts, just ahead of him with his weapon while grabbing another Sangheili by its throat in his left hand, crushing its neck with one full-strength squeeze before throwing it out in front of him, effectively 'blocking' the acidic green projectile of a Hunter's Fuel Rod Assault Cannon. Raising his SAW after reloading it with a fresh drum mag, the Spartan didn't give the Mgalekgolo the chance to charge up another shot, immediately opening fire on the five-ton collection of worm-like creatures and heavy armor plating.

Taking too many hits, the Hunter was unable to move in time to avoid the shoulder-check to its side that was strong enough to knock it over and through the wall beside it, though the Spartan still stumbled slightly from the impact due to the Hunter's considerable weight. The Spartan didn't hesitate in the slightest as he was faced with a reinforced concrete wall in front of him; his target was just beyond it. Emptying the last of the rounds his rifle currently possessed into the wall ahead of him, the Spartan reloaded his SAW just in time to shoulder charge the damaged section of the wall, busting his way through.

It was only then that he came to a stop, finding the target of the Covenant's interest. An _active_ piece of Forerunner technology; it appeared as a ten foot diameter ring of silvery metal with a fiery orange energy lining the black void that filled in the 'space' inside the ring, looking like a portal of some sort...

Before the five Sangheili Zealots in the room could react to his presence, the Spartan had already raised his SAW once more and opened fire on them, taking two down before the remaining three charged him with their Energy Swords. The third and closest Zealot was mowed down at point-blank range before the Spartan used his rifle to deflect the fourth's weapon to the side, only to drive his shoulder into the Sangheili's chest and knock him back. He then used his rifle like a blunt weapon, bashing the fifth Zealot in the side of its head hard enough to knock it to the floor before shooting and killing the split-jawed alien.

When the fourth got back up and lunged at him again, the Spartan turned to the side to avoid the lunging stab, only to drop his elbow onto the Sangheili's back, sending the Zealot crashing to the floor. Without a word or the slightest bit of hesitation, the Spartan lifted his left foot before stomping down on the Zealot's helmeted head, crushing the armor-shelled item and its contents like a rotten melon...

 _"Must you be so...brutal?"_ His AI questioned apathetically, but their question was ignored as the Spartan stepped toward the Forerunner artifact that was surrounded by UNSC sensors and other such scientific tools, reloading his SAW before mounting it to his back as he moved closer.

"What is this?" The Spartan finally inquired, mostly just thinking out loud while glancing to the side and spotting the holotank pedestal with a computer set beside it.

Before his AI partner could answer the question, the Spartan reached up and retrieved the Data Crystal Chip from the back of his helmet before slipping the card into the appropriate slot on the pedestal. A moment later, the AI's avatar formed in dark red light; a young woman made of bright red light bearing dark red 'technological' markings all over her form, her wavy waist-length hair cascading down her back and down in front of her shoulders while some of her chin-length bangs fell in front of her left eye. She was clad in a traditional Japanese yukata that was a similar shade of red as her 'body', the obi sash around her waist being about the same dark shade as the markings decorating her face and hands.

"Kurama..." The Spartan murmured, his tone being all the AI needed to know what the Spartan wanted.

 _"Just a moment, Naruto."_ Kurama responded almost casually as she started accessing the isolated UNSC data base that had been devoted solely to the Forerunner artifact.

She had been designed to hack computer systems of all forms to gather intelligence on enemy movements as well as assist in learning their technology; namely, the Covenant's technology. Not only that, but Kurama was a very calculative and primarily strategic-thinking Smart AI meant for combat, the only AI the SPARTAN-VI Program had been able to get a hold of, at that. It was through her that her Spartan partner was able to access the full potential of his Olympus armor even though he was fully capable of operating it without her.

 _"It...seems to be a portal of some kind, but...it's not to another location on this planet...or any other in this system, for that matter."_ Kurama explained, though she sounded just as confused and uncertain as Naruto was by her response.

"Then where does it lead to?" The 'Olympus'-clad Spartan, Naruto, asked calmly, yet firmly as he narrowed his eyes at the portal from within his helmet.

 _"I don't understand..."_ Kurama mumbled, mostly to herself as she kept sifting through files and data. _"It...doesn't lead_ anywhere _."_

"That's impossible." The Spartan countered. "A portal is a gateway, a door. Every door leads to _something_ , Kurama, no matter how minor or insignificant it may seem."

 _"But that's just it, Naruto."_ Kurama continued, still going through the wealth of information, explaining as she went. _"Apparently, it leads to_ here _. Except...The data must be wrong; that simply can't be."_

"What can't be?" Naruto questioned as he heard something outside, instantly turning around and aiming his rifle towards the 'door' he had put in the wall minutes ago. "We're running out of time, Kurama..."

 _"I understand, Naruto. I'm using the security cameras to keep an eye on everything."_ Kurama remarked before answering the Spartan's previous question. _"It's simply not possible, but...the portal leads back to here..._ in the past _. At least, that's what I understand from the data on the artifact's energy readings."_

"Anything else?" Naruto questioned while taking a knee, shouldering his rifle. He could see quite a number of Covenant troops gathering further down the road he had come from; too many for him to repel with him being so limited on ammunition and equipped with only one weapon. That left two options; One, make a final stand and kill as many Covenent troops as he could before they eventually managed to take him down...or Two, find a way off the planet. Kurama seemed to read his mind, becoming fully aware of the amassing enemy forces outside via the security cameras.

 _"I believe this is one of those times that we must take a 'leap of faith', as it is sometimes said."_ Kurama remarked from her spot, 'downloading' all of the information on the Forerunner artifact that she could find. _"Quickly, Naruto."_

 _'I have a feeling I might regret this in the near future.'_ The Spartan mused to himself for a moment before standing back up fully and retrieving Kurama, setting her back in her spot on the back of his helmet.

As a burst of plasma shot struck his shields along his left side and shoulder, Naruto turned around and gunned down the Kig-Yar 'Jackal' that had shot him. Using his free left hand, he reached behind his waist and retreived the HAVOK nuclear warhead he had collected earlier. He had figured he wasn't going to be leaving the planet alive and decided to take the nuke, just to take out as many Covenant with him when he finally fell.

"If this is what you say it is, then we need to make sure the Covenant doesn't ever get their hands on it." Naruto pointed out, already starting to type in the activation codes to arm the bomb before setting the timer. "Especially since they're getting desperate now that we're starting to win..."

 _"My thoughts exactly, Naruto."_ Kurama commented in full agreement as the blonde armed the nuke and set the thirty megaton warhead on the computer desk.

A second later, a heavy burst of plasma shot sprayed him from the hole in the wall. Turning towards it, Naruto unloaded his SAW in their direction while reaching behind his waist with his left hand again. Grabbing his only two grenades, he pressed the time-release detonators and tossed them through the hole, both explosive orbs bouncing to either side of the 'doorway' while the Spartan unloaded the last of the rounds in his gun into the chest of a Sangheili Zealot that rushed him with twin Energy Swords, but it wasn't enough to kill it.

 _"Seven seconds until detonation! Get in the portal!"_ Kurama urgently reminded, her voice taking on a slightly anxious tone.

"I'm a little _busy_ here." The Spartan growled as he dropped his useless weapon since he didn't have another drum mag for it, idly noting the apparent abundance of Sangheili armed with Energy Swords. Honestly, he found it a bit ironic; the first Sangheili he encountered on the battlefield had been armed with an Energy Sword and now what was quite possibly the last one he would fight was also armed with the plasma blades...

Catching the Zealot's hands at the wrists and holding them out to the sides to keep from getting hit with the split-jawed alien's weapons, Naruto was about to go on the offensive when the Zealot kicked him in the stomach, stumbling him back a couple steps despite his incredible bulk. When the Zealot lunged at him again, Naruto kicked the maroon armored Sangheili in the chest, knocking himself off balance while the Zealot was launched back out the hole in the wall.

As he fell back, he felt a certain...weightlessness while passing through the Forerunner ring...and then absolute agony filled his mind and body, unable to even scream as his vision went blinding white. Everything then went black a second later...

As it timed out, the HAVOK warhead detonated, wiping out virutally everything within a one-point-six kilometer radius, the strange Forerunner portal-ring included. In 2589, the UNSC returned to Reach. By 2592, it was back to full military strength and rebuilt. By 2593, for a second time, the once-reclaimed planet of Reach fell to the Covenant Empire when they broke the peace treaty between them and the UNSC, but not without the last Spartan on the planet destroying what they sought, just to spite them...

xXx

 _"From the beginning, you know the end."_

 _For some reason, that quote kept echoing in his head. What was stranger was the fact that some of his few memories as a child had started to play out in his head, recalling what little he could remember of his mother. Her long dark auburn red hair, her dark indigo-blue eyes, her pale cream colored skin. Many times he wondered what it would be like if he took after his mother's looks, but...he took after his father, having sun-kissed blonde hair and naturally tanned skin. Luckily, he still had his mother's dark blue eyes that were damn near violet instead of his father's lighter ocean-sky blue._

 _Because both of his parents had been SPARTAN-IVs, he had no other choice than to become a part of the SPARTAN Program as a very young child. Sometimes, that's what Naruto thought it was that determined his survival of the SPARTAN-VI augmentation procedures when exactly thirty-seven other 'applicants' died from the series of surgeries alone. It had made for a very lonely and harsh time for him, being the only one going through the rigours of SPARTAN-VI training and undergoing missions on his own; he hadn't really spent much time working with other Spartans, usually doing solo-operations._

 _After completing his training two years ago and joining the 'active' Spartan ranks, Naruto had been given full possession of the lone MJOLNIR Mark-VII '445 Super Wide' Olympus suit. What struck him as odd, however, was when he had been given his AI partner, Kurama, just six months ago. Normally, a Spartan wouldn't recieve a Smart AI partner until they had reached a certain rank. Still, if it hadn't been for Kurama, Naruto believed he just might have died at some point during the past three months while fighting back against the Covenant's Second Invasion of Reach..._

 _Now, only sixteen years old, the seven foot tall Spartan had been 'active' since he was fourteen, only two years before Reach had been invaded again. The second battle for the planet had lasted three months. During those three months, he had reclaimed nearly half of the high-priority areas on Reach lost to the Covenant's initial assault when the second invasion began, but he and the UNSC forces with him had been cut off from reinforcements and surrounded by their alien enemy._

 _They had been forced to fall back to the rebuilt Sword Base, something the Spartan found kind of ironic considering the last time Reach had been invaded. That was when his handler and only friend had sacrificed their life to make sure he lived. He wasn't going to disappoint her..._

 _"-uto! Naruto, wake up!"_ Kurama yelled in his ears frantically, the Spartan still feeling that weightless sensation as he grit his teeth in pain. _"Now's not the time to feel pain, soldier!"_

"Sitrep." Naruto grunted out throught clenched teeth, forcing back the agony burning in his muscles and coursing through his veins; whatever that portal had done, it hurt like a bitch on a bad day.

It had also gotten Kurama worked up into a frenzy, something he hadn't yet experienced of the normally calculating and seemingly apathetic Smart AI. Before she could even _start_ to answer him, Naruto learned what was going on...the hard way. As the altimeter subsystem in his suit registered the Spartan's rapid angular descent that would come to an abrupt end in only a handful of seconds, the armor-lock subsystems engaged while his shields kicked into over-drive, drawing on the suit's auxilary power cells kept charged through its kinetic motors to layer a second shield over the first for added protection.

"Aw, _fuc_ -" Was all he managed to get out before...

 _THOOOM!_

Impact.

Nearly two thousand pounds of heavy armor and augmented human flesh hit the ground like a meteor of black metal, putting a decently sized shallow crater in the earth from the collision. It was silent for several seconds as the thick dust cloud slowly started to settle. Sucking in a deep gasping breath as the armor-locks deactivated, Naruto grabbed his helmet with both hands and ripped it off despite the painful protest of his body. Half-rolling to his hands and feet, Naruto desperately worked on refilling his lungs with oxygen amongst his heavy coughing and gasping. It took a minute before he was breathing properly again, albeit a little heavily.

"No more portals..." Naruto groaned quietly between ragged gasping breaths as he put his helmet back on with some reluctance and tipped over on to his side, letting his still-aching body rest for a few moments. "Never again..."

 _"Agreed."_ Kurama responded as she regained her usual calm and cool demeanor. After a few minutes of laying there in relative silence with the exception of the quite pings and bleeps inside of his helmet from Kurama running diagnostics on his armor and its many subsystems, Naruto finally forced himself back up on his feet, suppressing another quiet groan as his muscles and bones protested.

"So, you said that portal was some kind of...time machine?" Naruto questioned while taking inventory of what he had left, something that was relatively easy thanks to his armor and HUD; no ammunition, no grenades, only a couple high-calorie ration bars, a couple flares, and his combat knife, which was sheathed on his left shoulder. No guns...

 _"To an extent, yes."_ Kurama responded while Naruto accessed the global positioning locator via his HUD, which had a pre-downloaded global map of every known planet from his 'time', and used it to give him an idea of his current location; if at all possible. While he did that, Kurama continued. _"Now that we are not in any immediate danger for the moment, I can now examine the information we collected more thoroughly...Hm. That's odd."_

" _What's_ odd?" Naruto questioned a little suspiciously, though he was a bit confused by his own investigations; not only did none of the maps have a match to the topographical scans his suit had taken automatically during his fall, but his suit's sensors weren't picking up _any_ kind of signal even _remotely_ close to anything used by the UNSC _or_ the Covenant. Nothing. Something that made Naruto's eyes narrow slightly as he contemplated the potential consequences of going through the portal after the discovery of such revelations...

 _"Well, it says here that the Forerunner Builder that was creating the portal had been tampering with an innovation upon early-Forerunner Slipspace technology; in essence, he was creating a sort of long-distance teleporter that could cross the galaxy instantaneously."_ Kurama went on to explain. _"However, it seems the portal was deemed a failure and sealed away when the Builder used the portal as a demonstration, only to...vanish. The Forerunner documentation says the Builder was never seen again after that. I'm assuming the Covenant somehow found out about the portal's existence and were probably going to somehow use it against the UNSC, not knowing that it was a 'failed experiment'."_

"I wouldn't exactly call it a failure..." Naruto remarked haphazardly, getting silence from his AI partner in response. Undoubtedly, the AI was partly confused by the remark. "We're still alive."

 _"Yes, well...There's more."_ Kurama responded a little cautiously, making Naruto's eyes narrow slightly with suspicioun once more. _"I don't believe we JUST went back in time, if we even did at all..."_

"Explain." Naruto ordered quietly, making his displeasure of Kurama's cryptic responses clear to the AI; now was not the time for her usual vague dialogue.

 _"I believe we might have crossed into a parallel dimension of some sort."_ Kurama answered bluntly, getting a heavy sigh from Naruto; things were never simple whenever he got involved. _Never_...

"Let me guess; that's why my GPS isn't able to pin-point my location and why I'm not picking up any UNSC or Covenant communication transmissions...And let's not forget the fact that there is probably no way back to where we came from." Naruto remarked a bit sarcastically, though a small part in the back of his mind wondered if he even _wanted_ to go back. All that awaited him back there was just war and death...

 _"Most likely, yes. However, I don't think it's quite that simple."_ Kurama responded before the HUD on the inside of the helmet started displaying some of the information the AI had gathered for Naruto to examine himself, only it had been condensed and 'simplified' into a legible format for the Spartan. It did nothing to alleviate the SPARTAN-VI's mild annoyance and ignorance of the situation's full weight. Kurama noticed and decided to further simplify her explanation. _"I don't believe it was our 'physical' selves that were transferred by the portal. Not exactly. Much like the Forerunner Composer, I believe the portal 'digitized' our essence and transferred us to a parallel dimension of sorts. Upon arrival, a temporary 'reversal' portal formed and remade our physical selves within the same general time frame that our forms were 'Composed' by the primary portal we passed through back on Reach."_

"Regardless of whether that's true or not...What do we do now?" Naruto questioned, nearly getting confused by Kurama's summary of recent events; metaphysics was something he didn't know much about and didn't exactly plan on learning. He was a soldier, plain and simple. _Not_ a scientist. "We're in unknown territory in a completely different dimension, the only form of defense I have is my knife and hand-to-hand skills, no way to contact anyone, and no idea on whether this planet is even inhabited by intelligent life, let alone other humans...or at least alien life forms that don't immediately want to kill me."

 _"Well, I'm picking up a signal of some kind due North of us. It's coming from a rather long distance from us, but it's a start."_ Kurama informed her partner. _"I can't 'tap' into it because of its strange frequency make-up, but it_ seems _human in origin, so maybe we got lucky. I can't pin-point the source's exact location, but it should be about a two day trek if we don't stop."_

"...We?" Naruto growled under his breath, his AI partner staying silent at the Spartan's irritated inquiry. Naruto couldn't help sighing in annoyance as he started walking in the direction Kurama had 'pointed' him in, glaring out in front of him at nothing in particular. "I really hate portals..."

xXx

"Back! The! Fuck! Up!" Naruto snarled out of frustration, punctuating his words with a punch to the large bear-like creature's body that knocked it back a couple steps every time.

Cocking his right hand back, Naruto let his fist fly forward with as much strength as he was able to pack into it, smashing the bone-masked black monster against a thick tree before sending the creature _through_ the tree. Panting slightly as he watched the bear-like beast slowly dissolve and evaporate into black smoke while the tree fell to the side, Naruto slowly looked down at his right hand. That had been a stronger punch than he recalled being capable of. Sure, he'd done similar things to Sangheili Elites, putting them through walls, but the bear-creature was the size of a Hunter and probably weighed about a quarter of one, putting it in the same general weight class as himself with his armor.

"Kurama...What is going on?" Naruto questioned a bit cautiously while staring down at his right hand as if it were an unknown entity...

 _"I don't know. The gravity isn't that much different from Earth's, but..."_ Kurama started answering before trailing off for a few seconds. _"...I'm picking up a strange energy reading that's...coming from inside your_ body _, Naruto. I can't identify it or even give you a guess as to what it is, but the energy reading is steadily getting stronger, but it's slow-going at the moment."_

"Could it be some kind of radiation poisoning from the portal?" Naruto questioned, honestly feeling a little nervous now that he was aware of an unknown energy signature building up _inside_ of his own body.

 _"I don't think it's radiation, but...I think it does have something to do with the portal. The one we came_ out _of, specifically."_ Kurama answered, her words doing little in terms of settling the Spartan's concerns. _"The energy seems to be_ helping _you, though. The minor fractures in your ribs from hitting the ground earlier are almost non-existent now and there's virtually no bruising at all. Not only that, but it's been reacting with your emotions whenever you get attacked by one of those creatures. I think that's why you're hitting harder than usual."_

"Great...Now, I'm turning into some kind of weird 'super hero' character...Just great." Naruto growled under his breath as he started walking North again, having already been traveling for a good twenty hours so far and encountered over two dozen of the weird bone masked creatures; bear-types, werewolf-looking types, bird-types, a giant scorpion-type, and even a few giant double-headed snake creatures. "So...What else is there? Let me guess; I can _fly_ now? Shoot laser beams from my eyes or something?"

 _"There's no need for sarcasm. I'm just telling you what I'm discovering as I'm discovering it."_ Kurama retorted a bit irritably herself. _"And NO, you can't fly or shoot laser beams from your eyes. Whatever the energy is, it's not causing any kind of problems. From the looks of it, it's only amplifying what you already have; speed, strength, endurance, durability, an apparent self-healing ability...Honestly, I won't know for sure until I can get access to some kind of data base or a computer with access to the information I need."_

"...This is getting ridiculous." Naruto muttered under his breath, referring to the situation he was stuck in because the Covenant didn't even know how to _pretend_ to be friendly with Humans. Sure, there was _neutrality_ between them for a little while, but there had never been actual peace. "First, Reach is lost and everyone is killed. Then, I get sent to another dimension because of a piece of _broken_ Forerunner technology...and then I find out that there's some kind of weird energy building up inside of my body. What's next?! Animal people?!"

 _"Sakura was right."_ Kurama mumbled in response to her partner's behaviour. _"You get cranky when you're confused or stressed out..."_

"Shut up..." The sixteen year old SPARTAN-VI grunted out at his AI companion...

xXx

"Man...Why do they bother sticking us up here?" One of the two Vale soldiers complained. "I mean, they've got those automated turrets from Atlas set up all along the wall to take care of any Grimm that try to get through, so why are _we_ here?"

"...Do you ever stop whining?" The other soldier murmured. Just as the first one was about to retort, a Beowolf burst out from the tree line a hundred meters out from the towering defensive wall that encircled Vale. Except, it was flying through the air...backwards. Recognizing the Grimm as a threat, the nearby turrets automatically targeted the beast and opened fire, the heavy calibur rounds tearing the beast apart within seconds. "What the...?"

"Look!" The first soldier called out while pointing back towards the forest just in time for one of the trees to fall over and another Beowolf to fly out from the tree line in the same manner the first one had; like it's predecessor, the second lycan-like Grimm was shredded by the turrets' gunfire. "What the hell is going on down there?"

"I have no...idea..." The second soldier mumbled while they both watched a third Beowolf get sent straight up into the air, making it an easy target for the turrets to tear into before it could make it halfway back to the ground. They then heard the enraged howl of a Beowolf Alpha seconds before watching it come crashing through the forest. Backwards. As it hit the ground and tumbled, a small black figure broke free of the beast and made contact with the ground a dozen meters away from it just as the turrets opened fire on the Alpha. "Wait...Someone's down there! How the hell did they get outside the wall and what the hell are they doing out there?!"

"I don't know, but we need to get a Bullhead out here immediately!" The first one exclaimed as he rushed to call for an airship to 'save' the heavily armored man beyond the wall...

"Fucking mongrel..." Naruto growled under his breath as he pushed himself back to his feet, glaring at the dismantled and dissolving remains of the giant wolf-beast that had been killed by the defensive turrets lining the wall. Seeing as how the guns hadn't opened fire on him yet, the turrets seemed to recognized him as a 'friendly'; that meant there were other humans. Or so he hoped...

"Hey! Don't worry! We've got a Bullhead on its way to pick you up!" Someone called down to him from the top of the four hundred foot high wall of steel and stone. Instead of yelling back up at the man, Naruto simply waved his hand over his head to signal that he had heard the man.

"...What the hell is a Bullhead?" He mumbled quietly to himself, but he figured he'd find out soon enough...

xXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXx

A/N: As some of you might have noticed, the original Black Steel story was taken down a little while back. I was drunk and didn't really think about what I was doing...and then proceeded to completely screw up the original chapters beyond repair. Thus, I said 'Fuck it!' and completely redid the story...This is what became of it. I hope it's to everyone's or at least most of my readers' liking.


	2. Chapter 2

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto, Halo, or RWBY.

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Black Steel

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Chapter Two

"Alright. That should do it..." He mumbled quietly to himself as he picked up the last piece of armor he had been working on.

Slipping the armored bracer over his hand and forearm, he hit the hidden activation switch, causing the metal object to contract and conform to his forearm as if the metal armor was physically bound to his body. The moment it was locked in place, metal pieces shot out from around the wrist to encase his hand in more of the black armor plating. The entire item instantly adhered itself to his bodysuit to keep from moving out of place. In less than a second, the armor piece was fully deployed and working just as well as it had when he had first started experimenting with 'Remnant's' unusual...'foldable' technology, as they called it.

While he was still working on an alternative power supply for his Olympus armor, Naruto had also built a handful of 'Dust' compatible devices into his armor and had even built himself a couple weapons to use in combat, but he had taken to relying on his hand-to-hand skills when faced with Human and...Faunus opponents. He was just glad that Kurama had a library's worth of data on all of the UNSC's technology that covered everything from his armor to vehicles to weapons. Using Kurama's _extensive_ stored data on UNSC technology, he had been able to reconstruct a select few weapons he was familiar with and had the most experience in using, a couple of his new weapons having some rather interesting secondary functions built into them...

 _"So, what do you plan on doing now, Naruto?"_ Kurama spoke up, her five-inch tall avatar of red light appearing over her Data Crystal Chip, which sat on the workbench Naruto had been sitting at a moment ago. _"You've finished upgrading the Olympus suit, you've even 'anonymously' had a couple harmless little 'inventions' patented for income...Why not take up that man's offer? It'll get you out of this dump and it'll keep you busy."_

"No..." Naruto responded quietly, yet sharply as he took the armored gauntlet off and set it with the rest of the Olympus suit's pieces; he had been forced into reverse-engineering almost the entire set of armor, replacing certain components with others to make it easier to put the armor on or take it off without needing any special machinery like they did back 'home'. Decorating the Olympus suit's left shoulder armor was the ivory mark of the Forerunner 'Reclaimer' symbol, all UNSC-related markings having been removed prior to its application.

 _"And just why not?"_ Kurama returned with a slight glare aimed at the Spartan. _"Are you seriously going to let your skills stagnate and deminish simply because there's no one giving you orders anymore? Just because there isn't another war for you to fight in?!"_

"That's enough, Kurama..." He murmured quietly while sparing a glance at the full-body mirror propped against the wall off to the side of the small warehouse-like structure he had been living in and working out of since he had arrived in Vale a year ago.

He had kept his naturally shaggy golden blonde hair in the same undershave he'd always had it in with the thin and tightly bound pony-tail stopping at the base of his neck. His skin was a natural light tan and his eyes a dark blue that were almost purple in color, a scar crossing over the bridge of his nose and across his left cheek to his jawline; a 'parting gift' given to him by the Energy Sword of the first Sangheili he had ever fought in his life. Ironically, it, too, had been a Zealot just like the last Sangheili he had fought before going through that accursed Forerunner portal...

As he often was when he wasn't encased in his armor, Naruto was dressed in the black 'lightly' armored bodysuit that he wore beneath his Olympus armor, the incredibly durable, thick, and almost rubber-like titanium nanocomposite bodysuit conforming to his body like a second set of skin. Over it, he wore a simple pair of baggy black cargo pants held up with a plain black belt and the leggings tucked into black knee-high combat boots. The bodysuit covered every part of his body, stopping at the base of his jaw where his neck connected with his skull.

 _"Oh, wait. My bad! I forgot that you've been going out past the wall to pointlessly knock around a few Grimm or go out to harass and shut down White Fang operations in the area a couple times a week!"_ Kurama continued aggitatedly, the normally calm AI gradually getting more upset with her human partner; she was getting tired of him being such a hard-core shut-in. _"Unlike me, YOU aren't a machine, Naruto! It's been a YEAR since we came here and you STILL don't know a single person in this world on a personal level! You can't keep isolating yourself from everyone like this just because you-"_

"I said that's _enough_ , Kurama!" Naruto snapped without turning to face the AI, still standing in front of the storage locker he kept his armor in, tightly gripping the locker's admittedly flimsy door with one hand. Sighing quietly as he calmed back down, Naruto slowly shut the locker before walking back over to the chair set in front of the workbench, a slightly tired sigh escaping him as he sat back down. "You're right...I'm _not_ a machine. No matter how many times I might call myself one...I'll call him tomorrow morning."

 _"No."_ Kurama remarked before pointing a tiny finger at the phone sitting not too far from her DC Chip. _"You'll call him_ now _..."_

"...When did you get so bossy?" Naruto grumbled quietly while grabbing the phone and standing once again to get a little privacy from his AI while he made the phone call.

 _"The same time you started acting like an agoraphobic idiot..."_ Kurama murmured quietly, mostly to herself, while crossing her arms over her chest and looking off to the side stubbornly. Shaking his head at the AI, Naruto walked away, already dialing the number. The AI, who had been 'fresh' when he had recieved her, had been developing a rather solid personallity of her own since they 'jumped' dimensions last year; he still held a strong hatred of portals because of that day. After ringing a couple times, the call was answered on the other end.

 _"Ah, hello, Naruto."_ The man on the other end inquired. _"Have you made a decision?"_

"I have a question I want to ask you first, Ozpin." Naruto responded while glancing over at Kurama, who had taken to looking through some of the data she had collected over the past year. "Do you have a uniform in my size?"

 _"I believe we can come up with something..."_ Ozpin replied somewhat jokingly, his mild amusement clear in his even tone of voice...

xXx

 _"Olympus is online and fully operational."_ Kurama informed her partner in the same calm and calculative professionalism she'd had when they were first paired together, her DC Chip firmly slotted on the back of Naruto's helmet. _"So...Nervous about your first day of school?"_

"Don't start." Naruto cautioned half-heartedly with a small smirk hidden by his helmet as he hefted the bulky and heavy four foot long rectangular object of jet black metal that was his strongest weapon, the pillar-like object being roughly a foot thick and a foot wide, before mounting it to his back behind his left shoulder. It had a number of different 'weapon modes' built into it with each one having their own strengths, weaknesses, and purposes. He then grabbed the reconstructed version of his old SAW light machine gun, which was jet black with a dark grey drum mag, before setting it behind his right shoulder. "But to be entirely honest...Yes, I am a little uncertain about today."

 _"Don't worry. I doubt anyone will be picking on someone like YOU anytime soon."_ Kurama remarked 'reassuringly', her quiet tittering echoing in the blonde's ears. _"They'll probably be too afraid that you might step on them..."_

"Very funny." Naruto mumbled dryly and sarcastically while grabbing the final piece to his full arsenal; the ever-reliable M6H2 PDWS Magnum pistol. It was a reconstruction, but still the same general weapon. Mounting it to the side of his right thigh, Naruto couldn't help letting his hand rest on the sidearm's grip for a second longer, momentary flashbacks of past experiences with the pistol flickering across the forefront of his mind; his old Magnum had saved his life on numerous occasions during the Second Invasion of Reach and throughout his 'short' military career in the UNSC prior to his 'relocation' last year. His new one had proven itself to be just as dependable as the original had been. "But that's not what I'm concerned about..."

 _"I know..."_ Kurama responded softly, fully understanding what he meant. Just as most other Spartans were, Naruto was an introvert because of his military 'upraising', having been turned into a living weapon by the UNSC to combat its enemies; the Covenant, most commonly. _"Don't worry, Naruto. Everything will be okay."_

"We'll see..." Naruto mumbled quietly under his breath as he finally stepped away from the jet black Warthog he had built for his own personal use, the all-terrain vehicle currently parked in one of the limited 'private' garages Beacon Academy offered to some of its students and staff.

Shutting the garage door and locking it, Naruto left the parking garage and headed for the main Academy building for the 'welcoming ceremony'. As he made the trek to the main collection of buildings, his suit's automated sensors predictably scanned every single person he saw along the way. The suit was even scanning and breaking down their individual weapons to form a 'threat level analysis' data base in its built-in memory banks, something that was stored in the thick collar around his neck.

 _"Ooh...A High Calibur Sniper-Scythe."_ Kurama cooed with interest as a small screen popped up in the corner of the Spartan's HUD that showed a live feed focused on the weapon and its owner, who was walking with a scrawny blonde teen equipped with a simple sword and shield. _"I wonder how such an innocent looking little girl got her hands on such a dangerous weapon..."_

"It's none of our business." Naruto remarked quietly before his eyes locked on to a girl with black hair and a black bow on her head. The same girl was staring at him with a look of barely restrained shock as she stopped dead in her tracks, watching with slightly wide eyes as he walked by her with heavy, muted-metallic footsteps. He could see the recognition in her amber eyes; she knew who he was...but how? He dismissed it for the time being, though the girl's 'profile' in his suit's data base was tagged for later review; it seemed they _had_ met before since her file was now _updated_ , not newly made like those of everyone else he had come across so far. "Ozpin better keep his word."

 _"I checked the guy's file and history; Ozpin has a knack for keeping his word in the strangest of ways sometimes, but he keeps his word nonetheless."_ Kurama commented. _"Still, he's got_ quite _the resume...It kind of makes me wonder why he became Beacon Academy's Headmaster."_

"Again, it's none of our business." Naruto repeated as he entered the main building, ignoring the looks of awe and hesitance many of the other students had on their faces upon seeing the seven-foot-four-inch tall walking mountain of black metal lumbering past them.

Picking out a spot along the wall near the main door, Naruto patiently waited for the welcoming ceremony to begin with his metal-encased arms crossed over his chest. Thankfully, he didn't have to wait long since, barely five minutes later, a familiar looking white haired man walked onto the stage, dressed in black with a green scarf around his neck, an odd looking cane or walking stick grasped in one hand, and a mug held in the other. It was quiet for a few seconds before Professor Ozpin finally spoke.

"I'll...keep this brief. You have come here today in search of knowledge, to hone your craft and acquire new skills. And when you finish, you plan to dedicate your life to the protection of the people." Ozpin began, his gaze slowly sweeping across the audience as he gave his...'speech'. As interested as he was in the teen, Ozpin let his gaze smoothly glide over Naruto in the same manner it did with the other new applicants. "However, I look amongst you and all I see is wasted energy in need of purpose, direction. You assume knowledge can free you of this. Nevertheless, your time in this school will prove that knowledge can only carry you so far. It is up to you to take the first step."

"You will gather in the ball room tonight." Glynda spoke up as Ozpin left the stage. "Tomorrow, your initiation begins. Be ready. You are dismissed."

Thinking over Ozpin's brief speech, Naruto narrowed his eyes slightly before heading in the direction of the ball room to find himself a quiet and dark spot to set up for the night. He never noticed the few pairs of curious eyes following after him as he waded through the crowd...

xXx

Emerald Forest. A vast and dense expanse of woodlands to the East of Beacon Academy just beyond Beacon Cliff. While it was home to the local wildlife, it also housed a multitude of Grimm of all kinds. The Emerald Forest was also Beacon Academy's chosen 'battlefield' for the Initiation Test...

Streaking through the lush green forest was a devastating beam of scarlet energy that _effortlessly_ went through everything it came in contact with. After only a second, though, the beam vanished, but it had left destruction in its wake; holes bigger than a person's head had been burned into tree trunks and rocks alike, some small flickering wisps of fire ringing a couple of the holes in the trees.

 _"Although it was 'Brunhilda's' first field test, I believe we can call it a success."_ Kurama commented as the forward-pointing end of the large and bulky jet black weapon resting on her partner's shoulder closed to cover the weapon's beam-generating barrel. While it had been most commonly called a Spartan Laser back in their original dimension, Naruto had given the multi-form weapon the name 'Brunhilda'; his SAW had been named 'Victoria' and his Magnum had been named 'Anastasia'.

"That was only the first test for the Nonlinear Rifle mode, Kurama, not the entire weapon." Naruto reminded his AI companion as he started walking North again while setting Brunhilda on his back. He then pulled out his pistol, Anastasia, and held the deceptively powerful sidearm in his right hand; so long as it was loaded with explosive-tipped rounds, his Magnum could kill the average Beowolf and small to medium sized Nevermore Grimm with as few as a single shot to the head. "We still need to field test the other three modes before we can declare Brunhilda as 'complete'."

 _"True, but the Nonlinear Rifle was the most complex weapon mode you built into it."_ Kurama reasoned. _"Since it's proven itself to be fully functioning, it stands to reason that the other weapon modes will perform just as well."_

"Yes, but there is still the chance that they'll malfunction." Naruto countered almost casually, something Kurama couldn't argue.

As he walked, the Spartan checked the topographical scan of the area his suit had taken while he was in mid-'flight' after being launched from Beacon Cliff. Ozpin had told them all to find some ancient ruins in the Emerald Forest's Northern area and collect a so-far unknown relic of some kind located within the ruins. He was still a little uncertain when it came to what the Head Master had told them about the first person they made eye contact with being their partner for the next four years...

"There seems to be a man-made structure less than half a kilometer away to our North-North-East." Naruto remarked, drawing Kurama's attention to the map Naruto was using. "Do you think it might be the ruins Ozpin was talking about?"

 _"There's only one way to find out."_ Kurama commented before 'tagging' the location, a small bright blue diamond-shaped marker appearing on the map and on his HUD with a small similarly colored distance counter just above it. _"Coordinates tagged. Estimated distance from target location; four-two-five meters."_

"..." Naruto stayed quiet, however, as he turned his head to the side slightly, having thought he heard something. Hearing another gun shot from nearby, Naruto instantly took off through the forest as fast as his heavily armored frame would allow in the direction the sound had come from. Switching Anastasia for Victoria, his SAW, Naruto crashed through the underbrush and out into a small clearing just in time to spot an Ursa rearing up on its hind legs behind a blonde haired young woman with yellow Dual Ranged Shot Gauntlets on her hands and wrists.

Just as the girl noticed the Ursa and turned to face it, Naruto had shouldered his light machine gun and opened fire on the bear-like creature without halting his charge, his SAW's armor-piercing rounds tearing through its flank without resistance. Closing the gap between them in only a handful of strides, Naruto shoulder-checked the Ursa, knocking it to the ground several feet away before unloading one last five-shot burst into the Grimm's chest to make sure it was killed.

"That was... _awesome_!" Yang suddenly exclaimed excitedly, completely forgetting her anger about one of the other Ursa 'hurting' her luscious golden yellow locks. "I mean, you just came charging through here like a rhino, guns blazing and everything!"

Naruto could only give the young woman an odd look from within his helmet before his suit's motion sensor picked up movement behind him. Reflexively, Naruto spun around instantly with Victoria's stock pressed into his armored shoulder and pointed directly at the source. Spotting the bow-wearing girl he had seen yesterday, however, Naruto immediately lowered his weapon before putting it away; it still had just under three-quarters of a drum mag, so he didn't bother reloading it yet.

"What's your name?" Yang curiously asked both Naruto and the black haired girl, glancing from one to the other. "I'm Yang."

"Blake." The girl answered while Naruto took his helmet off, letting them see his face; Ozpin _did_ say that they had to make eye contact.

"Naruto." The Spartan responded, look from Yang to Blake for a moment. That was when a thought occured to him. "It appears we've reached an impasse..."

"I guess we have..." Yang remarked with a slightly awkward grin, knowing Naruto was referring to the matter of who became partners and who was left to continue searching. "Maybe all three of us could be partners..."

"And what about the rule concerning the assignment of team mates? First person you make eye contact is to be your partner for the next four years." Naruto countered logically while putting his helmet back on.

"The first person you made eye contact with was me!" Yang pointed out with another grin, this one being more cheerful and energetic.

"And the first person _you_ made eye contact with was _her_." Naruto calmly argued, gesturing towards Blake. Yang's grin faltered at that...

"Yes, but you were the one that saved Yang from that Ursa and you just said that the first person we make eye contact with is to be our partner. Ozpin never said anything about someone not having more than one partner." Blake spoke up, finally joining the conversation. Naruto seemed a bit thoughtful at that while Yang's grin came back in full force. "The first person you and I both made eye contact with was Yang, so technically, she now has two partners."

 _"She does have a valid point there, Naruto."_ Kurama piped in from within Naruto's helmet, heard only by the Spartan. _"Besides, Ozpin has already made it clear to us that he sees a lot of potential in you. I don't believe he'll let you go so easily over something as menial as who our partner is."_

"...Alright." Naruto finally spoke up after a few seconds of thought, looking to Yang. "We'll do things your way, _but_...if it turns out that you're wrong, I will step aside and you two will become partners. Agreed?"

"Agreed." Yang determinedly parroted back to her fellow blonde. Yang's firm belief that she'd be the one that came out 'victorious' in the end showed clearly in her lavender eyes, something that Naruto immediately noticed before smirking slightly without really knowing why. What neither of them noticed, however, was the slightly cautious look Blake was giving the armored teen that she recognized as the same person that had been interfering with the White Fang for the better part of that past year.

Amongst the White Fang, the heavily armored teen in front of her was known as simply as the 'Titan'...

"We should keep moving." Blake suddenly spoke up, drawing the attention of her two new partners. "We still have to find the ruins, let alone retrieve one of the relics there."

"Right. Come on, it isn't far from here." Naruto returned as he started walking back in the direction of the still-tagged ruins, retrieving Victoria once more and cradling the weapon in his hands. Behind him, Yang and Blake shared a brief glance before following after the seven foot tall heavily armored giant of a teenager...

xXx

After only a good ten or fifteen minutes of walking, the group of three finally reached the ruins Ozpin had told them find. It was pretty busted up and old looking, being only a circular stone dias with a number of stone pedestals set up in a semi-circle along the back curve of the dias with the broken remains of a wall beyond the pedestals. Half of the relics were gold, the other half being black, but they were all still...

"Chess pieces?" Blake mumbled curiously as they drew closer to the temple ruins.

"Some of them are missing." Naruto pointed out, gesturing to one of the pedestals that didn't have 'relic' on it. "It appears we weren't the first ones to find this place."

"Well...I guess we should pick one." Blake commented uncertaintly; chess pieces weren't exactly the first thing that came to mind when someone said 'relics'.

"How about a cute little pony?" Yang asked enthusiastically while snatching up one of the gold Knight pieces, holding it out towards her partners for them to look at.

"Sure..." The dark haired seventeen year old girl drawled a little sarcastically with a roll of her eyes, but she still smirked a little at the blonde girl's cheerfulness; it was...refreshing, for once. Even Naruto couldn't help smirking a little at Yang's seemingly boundless energy.

"Well...That wasn't too hard, now was it?" Yang remarked idly while pocketing their chosen chess piece, still grinning.

"It's not like this place was difficult to find." Blake returned, though it went without saying that it would have taken them a little longer to find if it hadn't been for Naruto, who was standing off to the side with his light machine gun in his hands as he kept an eye out for any Grimm that might try to attack them.

"Soo...What now?" Yang asked a bit awkwardly, only for Naruto to notice how Blake was staring up at something in the sky. When he looked up as well, Yang curiously followed their example...

"BONZAI!" Ruby hollered as she fell through the air, only to be hit with another flying body that sent them both into a tree. Idly, Naruto realized that the second person had been the scrawny looking kid he had seen with the cloak-wearing girl yesterday.

"Did your sister just fall from the sky?" Blake questioned in disbelief, Ruby's 'entrance' having captured most of their attention, while Naruto stood up and dusted himself off, Kurama still panting slightly out of excitement with wide eyes.

"I..." Yang was cut short when they heard a noise not too far away before an Ursa burst through the tree line, only to collapse in death a second later with an orange haired girl riding on its back. While the others were distracted with the new arrival of the girl and the dark haired male with her, Naruto became more occupied with the arrival of the large Death Stalker chasing down a red haired girl as they, too, broke through the tree line further away.

Without hesitating, Naruto rushed forward in the girl's direction, wielding Victoria with his right hand while grabbing Brunhilda with his left hand. Activating the giant weapon's only defensive mode, Naruto ran straight for the Death Stalker as Brunhilda opened up to form a rectangular door-like shield that he quickly brought up while stepping between the girl and the Death Stalker's pincer. Bracing himself just before impact, Naruto deflected the snapping claws off to the side before moving the shield aside and aiming Victoria at the scorpion-like monster's face.

A split second later, the Death Stalker was chittering in both anger and pain as a relentless barrage of penetrating bullets battered its dense armor, taking out a small handful of its many eyes. Before it could suffer any more harm, the massive scorpion-beast used its pincers to cover its 'face', shielding it from the bullet storm. Using that moment to his advantage, Naruto switched Brunhilda to its Nonlinear Rifle mode, causing the armored plates to fold back in before bracing the weapon on his left shoulder like he had earlier while the forward-pointing end opened up.

Letting go of his SAW's trigger, Naruto held down the trigger to Brunhilda, causing a red glow to build up from within the barrel just as the Death Stalker parted its giant claws now that it was no longer being shot at. However, before it could try to attack the black armored Human, the last thing the Death Stalker saw was a blinding red light that filled its vision. The scorching beam of Brunhilda's Nonlinear Rifle burned straight through the armor plated Grimm in less than two seconds.

"Are you hurt?" Naruto asked the red haired girl behind him while she stared at him and the now-dissolving Death Stalker in awe. Left speechless by the sheer destructive power of the heavily armored teen's weapon, Pyrrha mutely shook her head negatively, still a little slack-jawed from what she had just seen. Nodding his head once, Naruto switched Brunhilda to the third of its four modes, causing the Nonlinear Rifle barrel to rotate out with another barrel of similar size; the 'Spartan Laser's' Dust-based power supply was almost empty now.

"Good. Go join the others." Naruto instructed as he turned his attention to the giant Nevermore flying high above them. Targeting the massive raven-like Grimm while the girl went back to the others to check on her partner Jaune, Naruto waited for the weapon to lock on to the Nevermore before squeezing the trigger. As the one-zero-two millimeter HEAT shaped-charge high velocity rocket shot out and streaked towards the Nevermore, Naruto was already locking back on to the aerial monster just in case the first shot didn't bring the Nevermore down.

Strafing to the side at the last second, the Nevermore barely dodged the rocket that had homed in on it before banking to the other side, intending to circle around in order to attack the human that had fired the explosive projectile. When the Nevermore circled back and lined itself up for an attack a few seconds later, Naruto waited for the first rocket to come back around and nail the flying Grimm in the back, causing it the shriek in pain and surprise, before firing a second rocket that caught the Nevermore directly in the chest while it was still disoriented.

This time, the Nevermore was too hurt to keep itself airborne and plummeted straight down to the ground, though it was still alive. As it hit the ground skid across the large clearing towards him, Naruto almost casually put Brunhilda away before reloading Victoria. Chambering the first round, Naruto shouldered the light machine gun just as the Nevermore, too disoriented and hurt to move at the moment, came to a complete halt only a dozen meters away from him. Mercilessly, Naruto squeezed the trigger and unleashed a relentless barrage into the avian's head, the bullets rapidly shredding the Grimm's black flesh.

"Holy _shit_..." Yang breathed out in shock, the others having similar reactions after watching the veritable juggernaut of a Huntsmen-in-training single-handedly take down two _Alpha_ -level Grimm, back-to-back, without even breaking a sweat!

"Did that... _really_ just happen?" Blake quietly asked, her eyes wide with slightly fearful shock; she had absolutely _no_ idea that the Titan had such powerful weapons...

"Uh-huh..." Ruby answered, also greatly stunned by what they had all seen, only it was for a completely different reason. His weapons were just so _cool_! She just _had_ to see them up close and try them out for herself later! If he'd let her, that is...

"..." Weiss, Ruby's partner, could only stare at the black armored teen that held everyone's rapt attention with a blank, dumbfounded look on her face. Having grown up in the miliaristic Kingdom of Atlas, she immediately spotted the signs of strict discipline and training that only a military-trained soldier could obtain, but his fearless stoicism and ruthless efficiency put him on an entirely new level unique to him and him alone.

The Schnee heiress was oblivious to just how close she was to the truth about Naruto...

xXx

Later that afternoon when the test was finally over, the eighty- _one_ new students that had completed the Initiation Test were gathered around the stage in the main hall where the welcoming ceremony had been held while Beacon's upper-classmen were situated behind them, simply watching as the team naming ceremony took place. One by one, teams of four were called up onto the stage before Ozpin would give them a personalized team name and designate who the team's leader would be.

Still fully outfitted in their battle gear, Naruto stood between Yang and Blake with Ruby, Nora, Weiss, Ren, Pyrrha, and Jaune directly in front of the stage. Helmet hanging from a magnetic strip at his left hip, Naruto kept his arms crossed over his chest with a blank, expressionless look on his face as he and the others waited for their names to be called.

As the newly formed Team JNPR (Juniper) stepped off the stage, Ozpin read the next four names on his list, those called walking onto the stage...

"And finally, Blake Belladonna, Ruby Rose, Naruto Uzumaki, Weiss Schnee, and Yang Xiao Long. The _five_ of you retrieved the White Knight pieces. From now on, you will work together as Team RWBYN (Rubin), led by..." Ozpin paused merely for dramatic suspense, his eyes turning to the youngest and shortest of the group while Weiss waited anxiously, believing she would be the one named as team leader. "...Ruby Rose."

"I'm so proud of you!" Yang exclaimed cheerfully as she hugged her younger half-sister. Standing at the end of the group next to Blake, Weiss could only stare at Ozpin in utter bewilderment, having fully expected that she would be chosen, not Ruby. Naruto himself was a little surprised with Ozpin's choice, but the man obviously had a reason for appointing Ruby as the team leader; the Spartan had no desire of being the leader, anyways.

"It looks like things are shaping up to be an...interesting year." Ozpin remarked casually, yet thoughtfully as the final portion of the initiation process came to a close...

xXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXx

A/N: And there you guy's go! Chapter Two! Now, I had someone, a 'guest' reviewer, ask where I got the pic. For those that want to know how to find it, go to Google Images (obviously) and look up 'Halo 4 445 large verge super wide' (it should be at the very top). The actually pic is different from the one I have set for this story, but that's only because I cropped the original; FFnet's image loader kept cutting off the sides...


	3. Chapter 3

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto, Halo, or RWBY.

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Black Steel

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Chapter Three

 _"You know, we never did get to test Brunhilda's fourth mode."_ Kurama remarked, her avatar floating over her DC Chip that had been set on the nearby bench while Naruto shed his armor, the 'team naming' ceremony that had followed the conclusion of the Initiation Test having ended a little while ago. He was the only person in the locker room, having purposefully waited until everyone else had left before disarming himself.

Hitting the hidden release mechanism for his body armor, Naruto waited a moment as the armor split down the middle of his back and opened up, allowing him to pull it free of his torso. After closing it back up, he placed it on its mounts in the larger-than-average locker the Academy had supplied him with, having already shed his helmet and the armor that had covered his arms. Mounted to either of the locker's two doors were his weapons with Brundhilda taking up the entire left door while Victoria and Anastasia were set on the right door, a full supply of ammunition for each weapon set next to their respective weapons.

"Then it'll just have to wait." Naruto returned while removing the armor on his legs, putting each section of armor away as he went. "Regardless, Brunhilda's three other modes are fully functional, but I need to find a way to decrease the Nonlinear Rifle's energy consumption without sacrificing power; it burned through its Dust core so fast that I only got two full-power shots out of it."

 _"I'll see what I can come up with."_ His AI partner answered before putting a hand on her hip and giving the Spartan a stern look. _"In the mean time, you better stop isolating yourself from everyone and start making some_ friends _or else I'll freeze up the Olympus's armorlock systems and seal you in your precious armor the next time you put it on."_

"...And I could just leave you in my locker next time." Naruto 'threatened' with a flat look, something that made Kurama flinch back slightly with a moderately nervous look on her face; she didn't like being away from her partner. Despite being an infintely complex collection of programming and data, the Smart AI still felt fear and being separated from Naruto was the one thing that scared her the most.

 _"You...You wouldn't do that to me...Would you?"_ Kurama questioned hesitantly, but Naruto ignored her as he started taking the armor off his other leg. _"You know how I feel about that, Naruto! It's not right!"_

"Then don't threaten to lock me up in my own armor." Naruto retorted casually; he wouldn't actually leave her behind or anything, the AI having been the one unchanging constant in his life for almost two years now and he'd grown far too attached to her to do that. Honestly, Kurama was his closest companion and the _only_ friend he'd ever had in his life. He didn't know what he would do with himself if he ever lost her...

He still had five and a half years to figure out a way to prolong her seven year 'life span' before she fell victim to Rampancy and 'died'...

 _"...You're such a jerk, Naruto..."_ Kurama mumbled as she turned away from him with her arms crossed over her chest, pouting childishly. Naruto couldn't help shaking his head a little at how his AI partner was behaving, smiling faintly. Although she was one of the most advanced Smart AIs the UNSC had ever made at the time of their 'relocation', Kurama wasn't just an AI to Naruto. Being incredibly 'human' in her behavior and personality and fully capable of feeling and expressing all of the same emotions a human was capable of, Naruto had come to see her as another 'living' being, another _person_ , not just an AI...

"How are the Pelican designs coming along?" Naruto asked while dressing himself in a pair of baggy black cargo pants, still clad in his protective and admittedly comfortable bodysuit. Like always. Kurama huffed as she turned back around to face her partner, though she still glared off to the side a little.

 _"They're almost done, but it'll still be a little while before they're finished."_ She begrudgingly answered, still upset with the Spartan. _"Converting UNSC technology into this world's technology isn't easy. Right now, the main problem is taking the Pelican's original fuel consumption rate and calculating what it would be with a Dust-based fuel source. After that, I'll have to come up with an entirely new engine and propulsion system for it and then try to refine it all to minimalize the amount of Dust it would use without sacrificing its performance capabilities."_

"Hmm...Couldn't you use the one you came up with for the Warthog as a guideline for the Pelican designs?" Naruto offered while shutting his locker and sitting on the bench beside Kurama's DC Chip, putting his boots on. Pausing for a moment, Kurama suddenly looked a little embarrassed as she looked down at her feet.

 _"I didn't think about that..."_ She reluctantly and quietly admitted with a slight pout on her face again. She huffed for a second time before giving the Spartan another stern look. _"While I'm busy doing all of that, are you going to start acting like an actual human being from now on or am I going to have to keep my word and lock you up in Olympus?"_

"I make no promises..." Naruto remarked as he picked up Kurama's DC Chip, her avatar vanishing in response. Slipping the card-like item containing his AI partner's sentience into a special pocket-like slot on the bicep of his bodysuit's left sleeve, Naruto sealed the small and shallow pouch to keep Kurama's DC Chip from falling out before finally standing up and leaving the locker room...

He had yet to see the dorm room he and his team mates would be living in for the next four years. The Spartan didn't find the idea of living with four young women in such close proximity of each other very appealing, but there was nothing he could do about it. He'll just have to endure...

xXx

"Just why are you so interested in him, Ozpin?" Glynda inquired with slightly narrowed eyes as stood off to the side near the Head Master's desk. The white haired man was currently staring at a handful of holographic screens originating from his desk, each one displaying different things about one person in particular; Naruto Uzumaki.

"Because, Miss Goodwitch, he is...a mystery. One that I intend to solve." Ozpin responded a bit cryptically without looking away from the video clip of when Naruto was found just outside of Vale's defensive walls. "About nineteen years ago, I came across a couple that lived here in Vale, one an experienced Huntsman that was a naturally talented technological genius and the other an equally experienced and highly skilled Huntress; interestingly enough, they both exhibited certain traits that Mr. Uzumaki himself possesses."

"Oh?" The platinum blonde woman intoned curiously.

"They were both exceptionally tall. The man stood at almost exactly seven feet in height while the woman, surprisingly, stood just an inch or two shorter than him." Ozpin remarked, surprising Glynda. The tallest average height women usually reached was about six feet, at most, so to hear that a Huntress had been almost a full foot _taller_ than that was quite shocking. "They both possessed incredible strength and speed as well as the minds and bodies of soldiers, but they were not much different than any other person here in Vale. They both wore a set of armor not unlike young Naruto's, but they weren't quite so heavily built as his. Another interesting fact...was the woman's last name; Uzumaki..."

"...You think he might be their son?" Glynda questioned curiously, getting an unintelligible sound of confirmation from the professor. "And just where are his supposed parents?"

"...They passed away just about a year ago after the airship they were in was attacked by an Alpha-level Nevermore while taking their sixteen year old son out on a 'training excercise' out in the wilds." Ozpin responded quietly, still having yet to look away from the screens floating over his desk while leaning back in his chair, his interlocked fingers held just in front of his face. "The wreckage was found later that same day and their bodies recovered for a proper funeral, but their son's was never found; their now-fifteen year old daughter is currently attending Signal. However, just a couple days after the incident, Naruto shows up outside of Vale's Southern walls..."

"Have you contacted the girl yet?" Glynda questioned a few moments after Ozpin finished. Beacon's Head Master shook his head negatively.

"No, not yet." He responded quietly before shutting down the projectors built into his desk. "I want to be certain about it before I contact the girl...It might not bode well if my assumption is wrong, now would it?"

"I suppose it wouldn't..." Glynda admitted quietly, though she didn't quite agree with Ozpin's decision to withhold the information...

xXx

"This...might be a problem." Naruto mumbled quietly a minute or so after entering the room he and the four girl's would be sharing for the next four years. "There's only four beds..."

"Don't worry, big guy." Yang started while flopping down onto the bed she had chosen, giving her fellow blonde a flirty grin as she patted the spot beside her. "You can bunk up with me, if you want. I won't bite... _much_."

"Real subtle..." Blake mumbled to the girl while passing by her to claim the last of the beds, the first two having been taken by Ruby and Weiss. She knew it was rude and a bit mean to leave the obscenely tall blonde without a bed or a proper place to sleep, but he had actually stepped aside and wordlessly gestured for her to take the last bed. While she felt bad for him, Blake didn't feel the slightest bit guilty for taking it...

"Let she who is without shame make the first move." Yang quietly stated in return, grinning cheekily and confidently. Blake simply rolled her eyes. During the brief few seconds the two girls had interacted, Naruto had mentally listed his rather limited options, weighed the pros and cons of each one in great detail, and selected the most logical and beneficial one; all in the span of only three seconds thanks to some of the enhancements he had undergone in the past.

"I will have to decline your offer, Yang." Naruto answered in response to Yang's proposal. The blonde girl looked a little disappointed, but the Spartan's following explanation for his decision absolutely shocked _all four_ of the girls present to their very cores beyond comprehension. It also made them all feel a little dumb, truthfully, from just how unbelievably _accurate_ and calculating his answer was. "Based on your height, age, body shape, and approximate fitness level, your body weight should be between one-hundred-fourty and one-hundred-fifty pounds and weighing two-hundred-ninety-eight pounds myself, our combined weight would be between four-hundred-fourty and four-hundred-fifty pounds. Judging by its structure and design, I do not believe the bed can support no more than four-hundred-seventy-five pounds without compromising its structural integrity; I would rather not test its limitations."

"Oh, wow...He's _good_." Yang murmured in surprise, amazed more than upset about his guess at her weight, while the other girls looked at her in confusion; unlike most girls their age, Yang wasn't ashamed of her weight. If anything, she was actually a little proud of it, knowing that muscle weighed more than body fat since muscle tissue had a higher density than fatty tissue; thus she weighed more than she actually looked, something she prided herself on due to her well-endowed hourglass figure and her condensed lean musculature. "He's actually right. I checked my weight just the other day before coming to Beacon and my scale said that I weighed a hundred and fourty-six pounds...I've got to admit, you really surprised me, Naruto. No offense, but you're a whole lot smarter than I originally thought you were. I actually thought you were a stereotypical 'jock' kind of guy that was all muscle and no brains..."

"Yang! That's mean!" Ruby cried out in Naruto's 'defense' from her bed across the room.

"What? I'm just being honest!" Yang countered with as much 'energy' as her little sister, not really understanding why Ruby was getting so upset; it's not like she flat-out called him a 'dumbass' or anything. Stuck between the two, Blake and Weiss wisely kept quiet and stayed out of the argument, not wanting to get caught in the verbal cross-fire. "Would you rather I lie to him? And don't you start with the whole 'not having something nice to say, don't say it at all' crap!"

"Well, you shouldn't!" Ruby argued with a combined childish glare and pout, having been about to do just that before Yang said anything about it. Finding the reason for the argument pointless and not wanting the conflict to continue, let alone get any worse, Naruto intervened.

"Stop fighting." With that one almost-casual and calmly spoken 'command', both sisters instantly went silent and glanced away from each other, the two looking not unlike scolded children. Sighing quietly, Naruto leaned back against the wall behind him and crossed his arms over his chest, closing his eyes and bowing his head slightly in thought. "Thank you."

"So, where do you plan on sleeping?" Blake inquired curiously as she readied her bed for some rest while, next to her, Weiss undid her bun-like pony-tail, causing her pure ivory colored hair to fall freely in a smooth waist-length curtain. For a brief moment, the Schnee's eyes, unbidden, wandered across Naruto's body almost appraisingly, as if she were judging his 'worth'...

In the short one or two seconds she stared at him, her bright blue eyes took in every contour and detail of his sculpted muscular physique, something made quite obvious to the world around him by the black bodysuit he wore that tightly hugged every last one of his highly defined and undoubtedly rock-solid muscles. A very small part of her, hidden deep within the far reaches of her mind, Weiss idly wondered what it would feel like to be wrapped up in his strong arms as he...

Forcing away the 'unwanted' thoughts and 'inappropriate' mental images that almost started to infect her mind like an incurable plague, Weiss immediately tore her gaze away from him a moment later and leaned down to take her shoes off, blushing slightly; she couldn't help it, having always had a preference for 'soldier' type boys. Naruto just so happened to surpass every single one she'd come across before, 'outclassing' even the soldier-esque boys of Atlas...

"Since there aren't enough beds, I guess I have no other choice than to sleep on the floor." Naruto answered, sounding almost comfortable with the idea, as he ran one of his gloved hands over his hair, absently brushing his finger tips against the small thumbnail-sized non-reflective dark grey metal plate set at the base of his skull; his Spartan Neural Interface, mostly hidden by his pony-tail.

"No, you are not." Four pairs of eyes instantly turned towards the source, three out of surprise and one out of mild curiousity and confusion. Weiss couldn't hold back the deep blush that warmed her cheeks as she tried to figure out why she suddenly blurted that out, fidgeting a little nervously as everyone focused their full attention on her. Heart racing madly, Weiss hastily tried to come up with a reasonable explanation, stammering and stumbling with her words. "I-I...I mean...It's bad for his posture...a-and he won't get any rest...and he'll be hurting in the morning..."

"Oh, yeah?" Yang almost purred with an almost fiendish grin on her face as she started to get an idea as to why Weiss was suddenly acting so strange. Still grinning rather wolfishly at the shorter and slimmer girl, Yang glanced Weiss over, thinking; Weiss could only feel all the more uncomfortable as the boxum blonde's leering gaze locked on to her. "You weigh a little under a buck-ten, right, Weiss?"

"T-That is none of your business!" The Schnee heiress spat indignantly, still blushing heavily while Ruby and Blake could only watch as everything began to unfold before them. Still leaning back against the wall, Naruto could only observe the four with mild confusion and slight curiousity, having never spent much time around other people in a social manner, let alone an all-female group. However, he was also growing suspicious of Yang's intentions...

"I'll take that as a 'yes'." Yang answered, her grin still in place. "Since Wiess apparently doesn't want you sleeping on the floor and just so happens to be the lightest one out of us all, you can bunk with her from now on. At least until we can get another bed or something for you to sleep on at night."

"WHAT?!" Weiss snapped, blushing even more heavily as she glared at Yang. "No! I _refuse_ to let someone I don't even know sleep in my bed with me! And who are you to make that kind of decision-"

"Where are you going, Naruto?" Ruby suddenly questioned, interrupting Weiss and diverting everyone's attention to the door.

"To work on my truck." The Spartan answered calmly over his shoulder as he gently shut the door behind him. To the four shocked girls left speechless in his wake, the soft click of the door latch echoed like thunder in the room...

xXx

 _"For a battle-hardened Spartan that's always the first to engage the enemy, you sure do a lot of running when it comes to your personal problems."_ Kurama nearly growled at her partner as said blonde worked on the Warthog's engine, fine-tuning some of the vehicle's internal mechanics. _"I thought we had come to an agreement back in the locker room earlier, Naruto?"_

Resting on top of the Spartan's tool cabinet was Kurama's DC Chip, her avatar standing atop it. Unlike usual, Naruto was dressed solely in his camouflage cargo pants and boots, his bodysuit having been left in the front seat of his Warthog to keep from dirtying it with grease and motor oil and such. Because of it, his few scars were visible along with the numbers '4-1-9' that branded the left side of his chest...

"We did...and I promised nothing." Naruto responded calmly as he adjusted the regulator for the coils that 'heated' up the spherical Dust core that acted as the Warthog's primary fuel source. It was more expensive and used most commonly in airships, but it lasted longer than the cheaper and more easily accessible 'liquid' Dust-fuel used by most other vehicles. Even still, with Kurama's help, he had equipped the truck with a secondary fuel system that held a decent amount of liquid Dust-fuel along with a system that let him switch between the two without any problems.

He even kept a couple five-gallon 'jerry cans' of the fluid strapped down along the sides of the Warthog's truck bed in the back, just in case he needed them in an emergency...

 _"You can't keep doing this, Naruto..."_ Kurama murmured softly, her tone losing its aggravated bite as her concern for the lone Spartan came to the forefront once more. _"Even Spartans need someone to talk to or interact with outside of combat."_

"I've got you, don't I?" He countered rhetorically as he checked the transmission fluid level, keeping his back to Kurama. "You're more than enough for me..."

 _"No, I'm not, Naruto..."_ Kurama sighed quietly before noticing the new presence that had quietly approached them. Instead of being startled or trying to 'hide', Kurama merely glanced at the person for a second before focusing back on Naruto. _"Just...please stop shutting everyone else out, Naruto; it's not good for you...and it makes me worry about you some times."_

A moment later, Kurama gave the person a pleading look with a small nod of her head towards Naruto, knowing that they had over-heard at least most of their conversation, before finally disappearing back into her DC Chip. Noticing the disappearance of the faint red glow that accompanied Kurama's avatar and finally noticing the almost inaudible sound of another person's quiet breathing from nearby, Naruto sighed slightly and picked up the rag he had set aside earlier, cleaning the oil and grease off his hands without turning to face the new arrival, his back kept towards them.

"She's right, you know?" Blake commented as she stayed where she was, standing in the open door way of the so-called 'Titan's' private garage space with her arms loosely crossed over her middle, still dressed in her usual every-day attire.

Originally, she had intended to get some answers to certain questions she had or, at the very least, more information on the one person that had the ability to set every White Fang member, former or not, on edge with his presence alone. Now, though, she saw him as another misunderstood person, not the indomitable metal giant she had first thought him to be. He was no different than her or anyone else, really. While it was obvious to her that he had almost no experience in social matters and most definitely had issues of some form when it came to expressing his emotions, he was still just another person, one that had been dealt a bad 'hand' in Life...

A small part in the very back of her mind couldn't help 'commenting' on the seven foot tall blonde's rather attractive physique, especially with how the almost nonexistent touch of sweat on his body made his bare and seemingly rock-solid muscled torso glisten ever so faintly. Forcing down her slight blush at the uninvited idle thought, Blake focused back on task...

"Whether they're a life-long friend, a lover, a spouse, or even a random stranger you just met, everyone needs some kind of relationship with another person in their life." Blake went on to say without moving from her spot. Even though he didn't turn to face her, Naruto suddenly paused when he heard her next point. "Even machine's need someone. How else are they going to be repaired or maintained?"

"Some 'machines' are made to be self-sufficient..." Naruto argued quietly and calmly as he checked the radiator to make sure it was still full of water.

"But _you_ are _not_ a _machine_ , Naruto. You're a human being..." Blake countered in response, her eyes narrowing slightly as her expression soured slightly, but not out of anger or annoyance; it was out of understanding that came from personal experience. "I don't know your past. I barely know anything at all about you beyond your name, but I do know what it's like to be alone. I also know what it's like to try doing everything yourself, to shoulder the pain and weight of everything going on in your life. It's tough and sometimes...it can get so heavy that you feel as if you're going to be crushed under that weight. You need to open up to _someone_ , Naruto...It'll help."

"You're one to talk..." Naruto shot back quietly, catching Blake off guard. "That bow of yours isn't as effective as you might think it is."

"...So, you know." Blake mumbled softly after a moment while glancing away for a few seconds. "Are you going to tell the others?"

"That's your secret to reveal. Not mine." Naruto answered while checking to make sure everything was still properly hooked up and that there weren't any leaks. There weren't any, of course, but he made it a habit to keep his Warthog in the best working condition it could possibly be in. Hearing his response, Blake released the small breath of air she had unknowingly been holding in, relieved to know that her 'secret' was still safe. For now. "You should go get some rest. Classes start at nine in the morning."

"I'm not going to back to the room alone..." Blake returned sternly, her tone of voice leaving no room for argument. Sighing once more, Naruto leaned against the frame of his truck's engine housing, bowing his head slightly.

"And just where am I going to sleep?" Naruto questioned, having yet to turn around to face the brunette. He knew he didn't need much sleep at all; about four hours every other night was enough for him to function properly due to his augmentations, but if it got her to leave him alone about it...

"There should be enough space for the both of us to sleep in my bed..." Blake answered indirectly before narrowing her eyes at the back of the blonde's head again, but with a slight sense of playfulness. "And I'm sure it can hold us both without breaking it."

"...I'll be up in a minute." Naruto mumbled quietly after a few seconds of silence, not wanting to talk about the subject anymore for the night. Blake, feeling a little stubborn, leaned against the private garage's door way, her arms crossed under her chest.

"I can wait." Blake returned with a hint of cynicism in her voice and body language, wanting to make sure that he didn't try to get away with not doing as he was 'told'.

Sighing quietly yet again, Naruto started putting his tools and supplies away, shutting the hood to his truck. After wiping off any grease and oil on his hands once more, Naruto grabbed his bodysuit and pocketed Kurama's DC Chip before exiting the private garage. As he went to shut the door to the garage and lock it, Blake couldn't help eyeing the three-digit number that marked Naruto's bare and broad chest, her amber eyes narrowing slightly with suspicious curiousity, wondering what it meant...

"So...Who is she? And just _what_ is she?" Blake finally inquired as she gestured towards Naruto's pocket. Realizing that she was talking about Kurama, Naruto thought about being truthful for a moment before answering.

"Her name is Kurama. She's a 'Smart' Artificial Intelligence that helps me with operating my armor, allowing me to access its full potential even though I can use it effectively in combat without her." Naruto responded honestly, just without any real meaningful details as they headed back to the dorm building. "While made up of data and computer programming, she is more like a person's mind in digital form, fully capable of feeling and expressing virtually every kind of emotion as well as freedom of thought, opinion, and speech. Although lacking a physical form, Kurama is no different than any other Human or Faunus on the planet."

"I didn't know there were such advanced AIs being made." The ex-White Fang member returned, growing all the more curious about the sole male member of Team RWBYN.

"There aren't. Kurama's the only one. My...'parents' made her for me almost two years ago and she's been my partner since then." Naruto answered honestly to the best of his knowledge, though he used the term 'parents' to replace 'UNSC' in order to keep his origins hidden. Strangely enough, though, he subconsciously had a very vague and almost unnoticable feeling that the term seemed much closer to the truth than he believed...

"Oh." Was all Blake said, noticing the hesitance in Naruto's voice and choosing not to pry any further. She then glanced at the black skin-tight bodysuit currently draped over the blonde's shoulder. "You're...not going to wear that to bed, are you?"

"...Is there something wrong with that?" Naruto asked a little uncertaintly as he glanced at the bodysuit himself. Noticing the look on Blake's face, though, Naruto decided it might be better if he didn't; whether he liked it or not. "I have a pair of shorts I can wear..."

"Good..." She responded quietly, though she was secretly glad. Her natural curiousity and so-far dormant attraction to the blonde had her wanting to find out what it felt like to be held by him, something she was certain would happen due to the 'small' size of the beds. Also, being a Faunus, she was naturally drawn to sources of warmth and judging by the looks of him, Blake had a feeling that Naruto put out quite a bit of body heat.

It took a great deal of will power to keep herself from blushing again as she forcefully derailed her thoughts from that particular path and others like it...

xXx

Contained within her own little 'world' inside of her Data Crystal Chip, Kurama reviewed the data the Olympus suit had automatically recorded the moment they came through the 'exit portal' a year ago. She had yet to tell Naruto the _real_ truth about how they ended up almost a kilometer in the air when they 'arrived' in the world of Remnant, the blonde having only regained consciousness at an altitude of about three hundred meters at the time.

For the first minute or so, Naruto, whose body was still operating under the control of the 'original' for the dimension they were currently in, was with a woman that, in every feasible way, looked _exactly_ like a Spartan. All the way down to her dark red and black MJOLNIR Gen-2 'Copperhead' armor and twin M7/Caseless SMGs. With her had been what looked like _another_ Spartan, the man clad in what appeared to be dark grey and black MJOLNIR Gen-2 'Hunter' armor with a BR85 Heavy Barrel Service Rifle, better known as a Battle Rifle, to go with it. They both also had a M6H2 Magnum set on the sides of one thigh.

At first, everything seemed to be fine, but just as the Bullhead's side door opened up to 'drop off' the three armored 'giants' and 'Remnant Naruto' turned to grab his weapon from off to the side, the airship was suddenly jarred quite heavily. The violent shake caused 'Remnant Naruto' to stumble and collide head-first with the edge of the open doorway, rendering him momentarily unconscious as he fell out of the Bullhead. It was only then that it became obvious that the Bullhead was under attack by a Nevermore about the same size as the one from the Initiation Test.

Seconds after entering free-fall, however, there was a brief glitch in 'Remnant Naruto's' Olympus scanners while what was visible of the teen's armor had a ripple of fiery orange energy wash over it. Kurama believed it was in that moment that 'Remnant Naruto' was completely replaced by 'UNSC/SPARTAN-VI Naruto'. In that same split-second time period, she also believed that 'Spartan Naruto's' Olympus armor physically replaced 'Remnant Naruto's' with the brief one or two minute long video being the only thing copied over to 'Spartan Naruto's' Olympus data base.

Unfortunately, the sound file to the video was corrupted by the transition, leaving it completely silent and due to the other two Spartans in the video wearing their helmets, making it impossible to 'read' their lips, anything said between them was forever lost...

Kurama still didn't know how to tell Naruto; no matter what, she had a feeling he wouldn't be very happy with her once he found out that she had kept the information a secret from him ever since they had 'arrived' in Remnant. However, she also knew that the longer she waited, the worse his reaction would be. It was now just a matter of how long it would take her to work up the courage to tell him...

With how his current temperament had been fluctuating, no matter how slight it seemed on the outside, Kurama might have to wait anyways, depending on Naruto's mood and the outcome of whether or not he started to open up to another living person. She really hoped he did...

xXx

The next morning, Yang couldn't help smirking as she glanced at the sleeping pair once again. Being early risers, she had been the first one awake and starting to get ready for their first day of school at Beacon while Ruby was just now getting in the shower. While her little sister had missed it due to her early morning grogginess, Yang had spotted how Naruto and Blake had taken to sharing a bed during the night while everyone else was sleeping.

Dressed in only a simple pair of black shorts with roughly three-quarters of his muscular build left visible, Naruto was lying on his side with both arms loosely wrapped around Blake's much smaller and slimmer frame. The dark haired girl's body was pressed almost flush against his bare broad-chested torso with her head nestled against Naruto's neck under his chin. One of her hands was lightly pressed against his chest while her other arm was slipped under Naruto's neck and wrapped around the back of his shoulders, essentially 'holding' him in a rather...affectionate and seemingly intimate manner.

Yang actually thought they looked kind of cute together with how they were positioned due to how 'gentle' and tender the scene looked and their obvious differences in size. She swiftly crushed the splinter of jealousy that entered her thoughts at the idea of the two becoming a potential couple before snapping a quick picture of the two with her Scroll for potential black mail material to use against them as leverage for some kind of favor from them in the future. A moment later, the violet eyed girl went back to getting ready for class...

"Prrrr..." The soft rumbling coming from Blake's throat as she slept was heard solely by Naruto, her contented purring being too quiet for any of the others to hear. Instinctively drawn towards the intense amount of heat exuded by his body, Blake snuggled a little closer to the blonde and nuzzled the side of his neck with her cheek slightly as she propped her chin on his shoulder with her throat touching his shoulder. Out of subconscious 'reflex', Naruto held her a little tighter, ignoring how Blake's hair covered part of his face and still feigning sleep just as he had been doing for the past hour or so.

He could barely grasp the _concept_ of what he was feeling, let alone understand or explain such feelings to someone; not even to himself. If he absolutely _had_ describe them as simply and in as few words as possible, he felt... _weird_. Having been in physical contact with the 'disguised' Cat Faunus for most of the night since they had gone to bed, Naruto was struggling to comprehend the effects and 'influences' their close proximity was having on both his mind and body.

For the first time in his life, Naruto had 'semi-willingly' foregone wearing his bodysuit for more than a few short minutes. With the exception of the few times he had been ordered to remove it back 'home', Naruto found himself trying to remember a time where he had actually touched another living being through direct skin-to-skin contact since he had first donned the pitch black full-bodyglove.

He couldn't...

His skin left incredibly sensitive from constantly wearing his protective and lightly armored bodysuit, it was a completely foreign and absolutely strange sensation for him to actually _feel_ things without having some sort of 'buffer' between his skin and whatever it was he was touching. What he was touching at the moment, just as he had been all night, had left him confused in many different ways; the warmth of another person's body that was pressed against his, the soft and silky texture of Blake's skin, the thin and delicate fabric of the girl's grey and white yukata-styled sleepwear, her warm and soft breath on his sensitive skin, her unusually 'cuddly' sleeping behavior as opposed to her rather anti-social personality when awake...

Although he was admittedly a little nervous and somewhat unsettled by the entirely 'new' experience of actually feeling the things he touched with his 'unprotected' skin, Naruto was honestly a little surprised to discover that he was strangely... _comfortable_ with his current situation. Regardless of how seemingly 'intimate' and familiar his and Blake's position appeared, he found the feeling of being so close to another warm body quite soothing for some reason and had actually slept almost all night instead of just a couple hours like usual.

It was all almost over-whelming for the solitary Spartan, who'd never really had _any_ kind of contact with others outside of combat and various militaristic encounters in the UNSC such as being issued orders by high ranking military officials and solo-op mission briefings via long-distance communications; being the only survivor of the 'failed' SPARTAN-VI Program, Naruto had done everything within his 'authority' to isolate himself from as many people as possible, something that went uncontested by UNSC and ONI.

The only person that could have been interpreted as being his 'friend' had been his handler. She had been a young woman named Sakura that had been assigned to 'watch over' him when he was only twelve, the strawberry-blonde 'pinkette' having only been nineteen when they had first met. However...for some reason, he couldn't stop thinking about what both Blake and Kurama had said to him last night.

"Mm..." Blake groaned softly as the early morning rays of sunlight pierced through the window and washed over her face. Tightening her grip on him, Blake buried her face against Naruto's neck to block out the light before starting to quietly purr again. Subconsciously holding her a little closer with one hand resting on her lower back, Naruto was oblivious to the faint, almost non-existent smile that formed on his face, Blake's shadow black hair hiding it from being seen by the others.

Maybe they were right. Maybe it wasn't so bad to open up a little bit...

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	4. Chapter 4

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto, Halo, or RWBY.

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Black Steel

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Chapter Four

 _"Are you sure about this, Naruto?"_ Kurama inquired a little nervously as she watched Naruto work on his newest 'project' for his Olympus suit. It had been two weeks since he had enrolled in Beacon Academy and became a part of Team RWBYN. _"I still haven't been able to calculate its stability. What if it were to overload in the middle of a fight? It could either fry the suit completely or just explode and at such a close range, either outcome has an eighty-nine-point-seven percent chance of killing you..."_

"I don't have any other choice, Kurama. Something in the fusion reactor was damaged when we passed through the portal and it has been losing power since. It'll only last another month, at most...and that's if I keep the shields deactivated like they've been for the past four months _and_ use only the mandatory core operating systems to conserve power." Naruto responded without looking up from the object in front of him as he continued adjusting certain components. The Spartan and his AI partner were currently situated in a 'private' workshop Beacon's students had access to for repairing and upgrading their weapons. The two lone occupants of the small workshop were quiet for a few minutes, one due to concentration and the other out of worry. As he finished, Naruto took a moment to reinforce his resolve for his decision. "It's the only option I have at this point if I want to keep using Olympus. I'll just have to risk it."

 _"I hope you're right..."_ Kurama murmured while watching from her spot on the workshop table. The 'private' workshop was more of a three-walled stall or room with no door to it, being one of many in Beacon Academy's Armory Hall building; many of the students had taken to 'affectionately' calling it the 'Forge'.

Set on the workbench beside the blonde Spartan was the whole body piece to his Olympus suit, which split down along the back of his left shoulder before cutting back towards the middle half-way down. The now-removed and properly disposed of fusion reactor once sat between his shoulders on his upper back on the body armor, the armored panel having been left open for the time being. In front of the Spartan was the new power source he had been building with great care and caution over the past week in his spare time after classes to replace the damaged fusion reactor that had originally powered his Olympus armor. The power cell's housing was made specifically to fit directly into the same 'socket' the fusion reactor had previously occupied with newly adapted connectors on both the suit's fusion reactor housing and the power cell itself.

The new power source was made up of several small Lightning type Dust Cores that pushed their electrical charges along a rather complicated 'celtic knot' of coils wrapped around each of the Dust cores in a continuous cycle, creating a 'tesla coil' effect. That 'tesla coil' effect amplified the power output of each charge a little bit every time the energy passed from one core to another and along the coils tightly wrapped around each core. It resulted in a single charge being multiplied several fold throughout one full cycle.

Each cycle took mere nano-seconds to run its course and each core produced its own individual charge, resulting in multiple cycles going on simultaneously with each core producing countless charges until the energy flow was comprised of a single 'super charge' that supplied the suit with power; theoretically. In addition to the 'super charge', the kinetic motors in the suit had been adapted to 'recycle' some of the expended energy back into the Dust-fueled power cell just as they had with the fusion reactor, increasing the cell's power supply a fraction more and prolonging its predicted life span.

In theory, the new power cell was supposed to put out as much energy as the old fusion reactor, if not a little more. However, instead of being a supposedly 'endless' power supply for the suit like the fusion reactor had been, Kurama had estimated that, at best, the new power cell would have an estimated life span of only fourteen months with the suit being run at full power twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week before needing to be replaced with a 'fresh' power cell. With an average of roughly one-twentieth of its expended energy being 'recycled' back into the suit's power cell via the Olympus suit's many kinetic motors with each movement he made, no matter how minor, the refunded energy boosted the theorized life-span to approximately twenty-two months; just under two years.

Realistically, however, Kurama estimated that the power cell's life span would last only eighteen months, at most, before it needed to be replaced with a new power cell. Should everything work out properly and remain within acceptable parameters, the 'low-ball' estimated minimum life span for the power cell was predicated to be a mere seven months. Even with such a 'short' life span, it would work just fine for Naruto, but they still had to actually test it and make sure it worked...

 _"Naruto..."_ Kurama spoke up just before Naruto could pick the power cell up, his hands just centimeters from grasping the dull grey metal object. It had a rectangular and somewhat flat over-all design, looking not unlike a cigar box, with three shallow 'lumps' in the middle of it where three of the cores were located while three more cores flanked the triangularly grouped cluster on either side in slightly curved lines, looking almost like a pair of parentheses. All nine cores were composed of the highest quality Lightning type Dust obtainable for the most power output for the longest amount of time achievable; anything less would have cut the power cell's life span down from months to weeks. _"Are you sure this is a good idea? Couldn't we just...find a way to fix the fusion reactor or something?"_

"You know as well as I do that we can't do that." Naruto responded quietly as he lifted the new power cell and carefully moved it over to his suit's body piece. As he gently eased it into the exposed housing socket, a strange sense of nostalgia washed over him for a moment, almost as if he had done it before. Bizzare glimpses or... _flashes_ of hazily vague and almost ghostly obscure memories flickered behind his eyes, subconciously guiding his hands as he connected the adapted couplings to the power cell. The...memories; they felt as if they were his own, but...he hadn't done this before. Had he? Dismissing them as unimportant at the moment, Naruto set the anchor rods and tightened them as much as possible to keep the power cell from shifting or moving in the slightest during even the roughest of battles. "Just...trust me, Kurama. I've got a feeling that it'll work better than predicted..."

 _"Alright...If you say so."_ Kurama whispered softly, not feeling as certain about the experimental power cell's success as her partner. _"Although it is the weekend, I've already acquired permission for you to leave campus for the night. You should be clear to leave as soon as you're ready."_

"Thank you, Kurama." Naruto responded quietly as he lowered the armored panel and secured it over the new power cell, silently thanking Ozpin for allowing him 'special access' to certain materials he needed for his 'projects', as per one of the conditions to their agreement, such as the Dust cores of his suit's new power supply. Fully dressed in his armor save for his body piece and helmet, the Spartan had already transfered his weapons to his Warthog beforehand, habitually keeping his pistol, Anastasia, mounted to the side of his thigh.

Instead of putting the body piece on, however, Naruto carried it in his right hand while his helmet hung from a magnetic strip at his left hip. After mounting Kurama's DC Chip to his shoulder for the moment, Naruto left the workshop and headed for the garages. He needed to run a field test and he knew just where to go to do it...

xXx

"Hm..." Ozpin hummed quietly to himself, completely alone in his office as he watched a live camera feed, among others, from behind his desk. Watching as Naruto drove away from campus via the lone and long road that ran between Vale and Beacon Academy, Ozpin couldn't help smirking slightly, his curiousity of the teen growing to new heights with every passing minute he observed him. "Just what are you really up to, Naruto Uzumaki?"

He had been interested in Naruto long before he first contacted the teen with the offer to join his school. He had been one of the first to hear of Naruto's 'mysterious' appearance outside of Vale's defensive walls a year ago and the short-lived events that had unfolded at that time. Not only was he intrigued by Naruto's 'unknown' past, but also his so-far unrivaled combative skills and his choice in equipment...

Over the past few years, a number of Atlesian companies and military weapon technology contractors had made quite a few attempts to create a suit of powered armor in a manner not too dissimilar to Naruto's, but none had ever been successful; some had come close, but still fell short in the end. A part of him wondered how the boy had managed it, but another part of Ozpin wanted to keep an eye on the teen to keep him safe; some of those same companies weren't afraid to resort to 'forcing' others into giving them what they wanted.

Rumor had it that they would do anything from simply 'buying' someone out for their invention to blackmailing them into handing it over to their company to even stealing such inventions from their makers in many different ways to doing just about everything else inbetween...

The companies that utilized such shady and borderline-illegal tactics had a tendency to be good at what they did and Ozpin wanted to make sure Naruto wasn't harmed by such inidividuals. It only made things a little harder for him to do just that due to not having someone available to shadow the boy to act as his 'secret guardian', someone that would only step in if things became too much for the teen to handle on his own.

An idle thought passed through the white haired professor's head. He wondered if there was anything in the world that the heavily armored 'juggernaut' of a teenager _couldn't_ handle, thinking back to some of the 'physical exam tests' he had undergone, just as other students had that didn't have any records of them attending a Hunter training school like Signal...

Without his armor, he was capable of lifting a little less than three times his own body weight. With his suit, Naruto had been able to lift almost a ton and a half, but only for a brief few seconds. His speed was astounishing, both with and without his armor. On foot without his armor, they had gauged him to run as fast as almost thirty-five miles per hour with an unbelievable amount of stamina. With his armor on, Naruto's fastest speed had been recorded to be just over twenty miles per hour, but only for a few minutes at a time.

Being a combat school, they had also tested his hand-to-hand skills and punching strength. Even without his armor, they had been unable to properly gauge his physical strength due to a combination of the sheer power his body possessed and their 'testing' equipment being insufficient to accurately 'measure' the Huntsman-in-training's strength, let alone the incredible might he commanded when clad in his armor. When it came to his unarmed and unarmored hand-to-hand skills, they had pitted him against Beacon's top combat instructor, who specialized in unarmed combat; the fight had resulted in a draw with neither one gaining any kind of advantage over the other while both left the sparring arena with plenty of dark bruises scattered across their individual bodies.

"Just what is a... _Spartan_ capable of, Naruto?" Ozpin inquired quietly under his breath as he tapped into Vale's vast array of security cameras, intending to track Naruto's movements through the city with them. When they had first talked in person shortly after Ozpin contacted him the first time, Naruto had accidentally made a comment about him being something called a 'Spartan', but instantly became tight-lipped whenever Ozpin questioned him about it. It was another reason why he had agreed, without much resistance, to Naruto's admittedly few, but rather costly and mildly unusual 'conditions' for him to agree to enroll into Beacon Academy.

Ozpin wanted to know as much as he could about what Naruto could do and, hopefully, gain some form of insight as to what a 'Spartan' was and what they could do. That and to find out if there were any others, outside of those the professor suspected to be the teen's family...

He would just have to wait and see, gathering more information along the way before he finally confronted the soldier-like young man about it...

xXx

"What the hell _is_ he?!" One of the White Fang grunts called out in both fear and disbelief as he and his similarly clad Faunus comrades kept firing at the heavily armored behemoth they knew to be the 'Titan'. Their low calibur bullets pinged and ricocheted off of Naruto's Olympus armor all across his body as he charged forward and backhanded one of the masked Faunus 'rebels', sending the woman flying several meters before colliding with a wall.

"He's a fucking _monster_ , that's what he is!" One of the other White Fang troops yelled back in response before the 'Titan' simply swatted another of their comrades across their shoulder, knocking them into the Faunus that had answered the other and sending both to the ground.

While he was careful to hold back enough to keep from accidentally killing any of them, Naruto wanted to instill a sense of fear in the White Fang footsoldiers that would either dissuade them from continuing to work with the once-peaceful and now-violent White Fang organization or break their morale to the point that they wouldn't even bother trying to fight him any more. It was rather 'naive' of him, but after spending a year in Remnant, Naruto had actually lost the 'battle lust' and immediate urge to 'kill' his enemies that the UNSC had practically engraved into his very being.

Because he no longer wanted to kill anyone ever again, Naruto had taken to fighting Humans and Faunus with his bare hands instead of using his weapons on them. Weapons that had been designed solely for the acts of killing and destroying whatever they were pointed at. The only weapons he would actually use against Humans and Faunus would be Brunhilda's shield mode and his customized combat knife, but only if things started getting too difficult for him to accomplish bare handed.

"Kurama." Naruto quietly and stoicly addressed his AI partner as he spotted a kneeling White Fang troop at the far end of the industrial warehouse with a rocket launcher resting on their shoulder. Just as they fired their weapon, Naruto hunkered down in a very slight crouch with his head tucked down and left forearm held out in front of him defensively while his energy shields flashed over his body as they became active. As the rocket reached the half-way point between the launcher it had been fired from less than a second prior and its designated target, Naruto narrowed his eyes. "Initiate 'Hard-Light' protocol."

A split second before impact, a bright flash of blue-ish light rushed across his body as his energy shield generators redirected the energy to his left forearm. Flash-forging a tall and broad 'wall' of dense blue energy 'shards' in front of his extended left forearm, Naruto subconsciously darkened the tinting on his visor to keep from getting blinded by the bright light of the rocket detonating the instant it collided with his prototype version of a Forerunner 'Hard-Light Shield'. As the force of the blast shattered the Hard-Light Shield, Naruto was already starting to move.

Sprinting as fast as he could without injuring himself, Naruto focused his sights on the White Fang soldier with the rocket launcher. Nearing the Deer Faunus's general location, Naruto jumped up as high as he could while his thruster jets fired at full power for a brief moment. Planting one armor-encased foot on a solid steel cargo container and causing it to cave in a good bit from his weight, Naruto kicked off of it in another thruster-aided jump, crushing the metal container even more from the force of his 'take off'.

Grasping the edge of the catwalk the White Fang troop was standing on with his left hand, Naruto ceased focusing his attention on the man as he started falling back down to the ground. As the catwalk was ripped from its ceiling-mounted supports and fell to the ground behind him with the Deer Faunus following it, Naruto, just passing the apex of his leap, cocked his right hand back while all of his thruster jets fired at full power, sending him rocketing straight towards the ground at even greater speeds. Driving his fist into the stone floor with as much strength as he could gather in such a short amount of time, Naruto ignored the distinct and visible 'ripple' that coursed through the ground as a circular pulse of blue Aura energy rushed out from the point of contact.

Standing up after executing a 'signature' Spartan move often refered to as the 'Ground Pound', Naruto calmly looked around him to find nearly a dozen White Fang soldiers lying on the ground around him within a twenty foot radius around him, most of them either knocked unconscious or hurting too much to get back up after the powerful 'area of effect' attack.

"Kurama. Status report." Naruto ordered calmly now that the chaos of the admittedly one-sided battle had come to an end.

 _"The power supply is holding up fine. No surges or fluctuations with the power distribution. Olympus is still running at full power. However, as you might have noticed already, the Hard-Light Shield completely drained your energy shields upon activation; auxillary shields as well. It'll take a few minutes for the system to recover before your energy shields can be deployed again."_ Kurama responded in her usual professionalism when on the 'battlefield'. _"In addition, the Hard-Light Shield prototype built into your left bracer is completely fried; we miscalculated both the amount of power needed to activate it and the strain it would place upon the hardware. You'll have to rebuild the entire device from scratch. Excluding the shield's damaged hardware, the Hard-Light Shield performed within acceptable parameters, holding strong against the rocket throughout the full explosion before 'giving out' exactly two-point-one milliseconds after the explosion decayed to a non-lethal level."_

"Hm...It was only a first generation prototype. Failures are to be expected." Naruto murmured in return, mostly just thinking out loud as he stared down at the armor covering his left forearm, a very thin line of smoke rising from the main Hard-Light projector built into his gauntlet. "It'll take some time before I'll be able to place another order for materials and supplies; I didn't expect certain projects to break down so quickly when me and Ozpin agreed to keep my orders limited to once a month..."

 _"In the mean time, I'll be making adjustments to the Hard-Light Shield designs to compensate for the new technical problems. We'll need a heavier gauge wire of another type of metal that can handle the Hard-Light Shield's high power output."_ Kurama remarked from within Naruto's helmet. Before she could continue, however, a low calibur round pinged off the back of Naruto's head. Slowly turning around, Naruto stared at the barely standing White Fang grunt that had shot him with the pistol grasped in their shaking hands, their whole body visibly shivering out of utter terror.

Without saying a word, Naruto calmly and purposefully walked towards the man with a slow, evenly measured stride, his heavy muted-metallic footsteps rumbling and echoing like booming thunder in the deathly silent warehouse. With each step closer, the Dog Faunus stepped back, his frightened shaking growing a little more obvious each time.

"St-Stay back!" The lone White Fang footsoldier cried fearfully before firing off another round that glanced off the side of Naruto's helmet at the corner of his visor; it did nothing more than put a tiny crack in the toughened armor-glass, the Spartan not even flinching in the slightest or pausing in his trek towards the lone dog-eared man. Tripping over his own feet a moment later and stumbling back against one of the many cargo containers in the warehouse, the White Fang militant accidentally fired off another shot that glanced off the side of Naruto's left thigh just a few inches above his knee. "Ge...Get away from me!"

"..." Maintaining his vigilance, Naruto stalked right up to the man that was moments away from either pissing himself, screaming like a little girl, running like a scared rabbit, or a combination of the three. Stopping within arm's reach of the Faunus, Naruto simply 'glared' down at the shorter male, the slender visor of his helmet being all the intimidation he needed to keep the man rooted to his spot, completely unfazed by the fact that the Faunus was pointing his pistol directly at his face.

Still without uttering a single word or sound, Naruto slowly reached up and wrapped his fingers around the pistol grasped in the man's shaking hands. The next moment, three consecutive shots rang out, ricocheting off the blonde's helmet each time; thankfully, he had grabbed the pistol and moved it aside just enough for the bullets to glance across the metal plating along his helmet's 'jaw line'. Even as highly advanced and so heavily armored as his suit was, the visor on his helmet was still Olympus's biggest weak spot, just as it had been for all of the MJOLNIR armor models since the very beginning. Despite being a low calibur gun, the bullets in the Faunus's pistol would have still gone through his visor at point-blank range and undoubtedly killed him.

As the gun clicked uselessly and repeatedly in the absolutely terrified White Fang rebel's desperate grasp, Naruto simply closed his eyes and took a slow, deep breath; he had to give the man credit for his fighting spirit despite being so incredibly scared, but there were some battles that just shouldn't be fought. One such battle was standing up against the SPARTAN-VI, solo, with such a weak gun _after_ watching said Spartan completely decimate an entire group of three dozen armed combatants. Bare handed. With a single little tug, Naruto ripped the pistol from the man's hands before easily and swiftly dismantling it, dropping the pieces to the disassembled gun on the ground with each metal part ringing as they hit the concrete flooring.

He then leaned down a little until their faces were only inches apart...

"Don't. Do. That. Again." Naruto growled out slowly and quietly before straightening his back again and starting to walk away. He completely ignored the sound of the Faunus falling to the ground, having fainted after such a close brush with 'death'. "What's the next target, Kurama? We still have seven hours to finish testing the other secondary combat systems."

 _"The Vale Police Department communication channels have been hinting at a possible crime syndicate located here in the city. According to what has been said over the comms, they have a low over-all threat level, but are rumored to have a large number of members."_ Kurama offered in response, though she 'rolled' her eyes from within her digital realm after watching her partner, through Olympus, purposefully scare the poor Dog Faunus into nearly having a heart attack. _"I'm tagging all known and suspected 'hot spots' for the syndicate on your GPS. Tapping into the VPD database via wireless connection through the communication channels...Transferring all known files on the syndicate to Olympus's database now."_

"...Torchwick, Roman..." Naruto mumbled quietly as he narrowed his eyes slightly, the 'summarized' and condensed file on the man currently being displayed off to the side of his HUD. He also noticed that there were nearly four dozen 'tagged' locations showing up on his GPS. "Narrow down the target locations to those where Torchwick has been sighted on more than one occassion in the past six months. Also, display the time and date stamps for each of the sightings at each location and designate them with priority markers according to the chronological order of the sightings. I want to see if there's any kind of pattern to his movements. It might give away the approximate location of where he's been hiding out at."

 _"One moment...There you go."_ Kurama responded, the four dozen tagged locations sharply dropping down to only a dozen and a half locations, a series of multi-colored lines connecting each of the tagged locations in a rough pattern of Roman Torchwick's movements. Each of the GPS 'tags' had anywhere between two and fifteen reported sightings with surprisingly pin-point accurate and precise time and date stamps for each sighting that counted down to the millisecond of the reported sighting; Kurama had obviously accessed the VPD link to Vale's innumerable security cameras that lined virtually every street in the city and cross-referenced the sighting reports with old security recordings, videos, and pictures.

Even after working together for a little more than a year and a half so far, the 'Smart AI' continued to surprise him every so often, especially with how quickly she had adapted to the foreign technology of their new 'home'...

"I doubt we'll find him tonight, but we'll start from the beginning and retrace his steps. If I can figure out a more definite pattern to his movements, I might be able to figure out what his next move might be." Naruto instructed as he exited the warehouse and made his way over to his Warthog, taking a moment to make sure his weapons were where he had left them when he had blitzed the group of White Fang 'thugs'; they had been preparing to mobilize against a small convoy of Schnee Dust Company trucks ferrying Dust from the Industrial District's loading docks to the Commercial District, where the Dust would then be distributed amongst the stores and businesses listed on their delivery routes.

Brunhilda, his only real multi-form weapon, was mounted to the driver-side interior 'wall' of the truck bed via magnetic plates that he could switch on and off to keep it from moving around or getting lost/stolen while he was driving or while away from the heavy duty all-terrain vehicle. Victoria, his SAW, was set in a 'slot' set next to the driver's seat between it and the bottom edge of the Warthog's 'door', the light machine gun having also been anchored in place with magnetic plates, to ensure that his primary weapon was always on-hand whenever he was in or at least near the truck. As always, though, Anastasia, his Magnum pistol, was magnetically holstered to the side of his right thigh.

 _"Just remember that we have to get back to Beacon in time to meet back up with the rest of our team."_ Kurama reminded. An almost non-existent grimace tugged at the blonde's lips. _"Ruby seemed really excited about us all going out together...as a TEAM."_

"I _remember_ , Kurama." Naruto returned with a slightly irritated tone as he climbed into his Warthog and started the engine. "I don't want to, but...I'll go."

xXx

 _Explosions tore up the pavement and buildings all around him as he charged the ground forces he was faced with. The city had once been a brilliant and prospering metropolis for man-kind, but it was now a war zone, turned into a rugged and disheartening battlefield by their alien foes; a rather large force of Sangheili that had broken away from the Covenant after the neutrality treaty had been established between the conflicting factions of the Covenant and the UNSC and Humans in general._

 _"We're all going to die here, man! There's no way we can win this!" One of the marines cried from within the dense fog of aerated stone-dust and smoke that shrouded the area; the soldier had succumbed to his fear. "We need to get the fuck out of here!"_

 _"Stow it, Soldier!" Another marine barked out between short fits of return fire from his UNSC-issued Battle Rifle, judging by the sound of its three-shot bursts. He didn't waste any more time listening to them as he rushed out from behind the stone wall he had taken cover behind to avoid the most recent bout of heavy plasma 'shelling' from the three Covenant Wraiths set at the opposite end of the broad and long road._

 _It was his first real battle outside of the few solo-ops he had done to wipe out key enemy installations for both the Sangheili forces he was currently faced with and the Human insurrectionist forces that constantly harassed the UNSC. It was also the first battle he had fought that involved other UNSC forces, including his Spartan brethren; he wasn't used to fighting alongside comrades. From the very beginning, he had been called a 'lone wolf', being the lone survivor of the SPARTAN-VI Program augmentations._

 _Shouldering his SAW as his suit's highly advanced built-in sensors adjusted to the dense dust cloud he was submerged in, Sierra-419 narrowed his eyes slightly from within the confines of his jet black helmet. As his automated sensors pierced through the veil of pale grey dust and onyx smoke, Sierra-419's eyes flicked from one side to the other as his HUD changed slightly, outlining everything in front of him to define virtually everything within his field of view. Working in tandem with his motion tracker, 'friendly' UNSC marines and ODSTs were outlined in green amongst the hues of grey and black that tried to shroud his enemies while the Sangheili were tagged on his motion tracker and outlined on his HUD in scarlet._

 _Spotting the first one to cross his path just ten meters ahead of him, Sierra-419 raised his rifle without breaking stride, intending to gun down the 'split-jawed' alien. Before he could squeeze the trigger to his drum-fed light machine gun, however, another Sangheili sprung from its hiding place just a few feet away from him on his left. Letting loose a bellowing roar, the Zealot swung its right Energy Sword to cleave through the Spartan's helmet and skull, the second Energy Sword grasped in its left hand having already been cocked back for a follow-up swing._

 _Digging his heels into the ground and twisting his body just in time, Sierra-419's eyes widened as the blazing hot plasma blade made contact with his helmet in a grazing sweep, scarring the armor mounted across his chest immediately afterwards. Without making a sound outside of a pained grunt through gnashed teeth, Sierra-419 followed through with the turn, swinging his SAW around before squeezing the trigger at point-blank range. In a rapid and continuous explosion of gun fire, the Zealot stumbled back repeatedly as the armor-piercing rounds the weapon was loaded with tore through its energy shield and armor, drilling through its dark flesh with little resistance._

 _"Tch..." Sierra-419 scoffed with a scowl as the Zealot fell on its back, its dark blue blood pooling under its body. Ignoring the fierce pain coming from the cauterized slash wound that now cut across his nose and left cheek from the seering hot blade of the Zealot's plasma-based close-combat weapon, Sierra-419 looked back up and to the side in the direction of the Sangheili he had originally targeted. A single dark blue eye glared out through the crevice burned into his helmet and visor as the lone SPARTAN-VI to exist single-handedly swung his SAW back around and pointed it back at the now-charging and common-place 'Elite Minor'._

 _Without a single shred of mercy or a nano-second's worth of hesitation, Sierra-419 opened fire on the Sangheili as plasma fire from its Storm Rifle splashed against the monolithic SPARTAN-VI's heavy duty energy shields just as they recharged, his secondary auxillary shields having activated the instant the deceased Zealot's Energy Sword had moved away from his body. Ignoring the fist-sized projectiles of super-heated energy as they crashed against his shield 'harmlessly', the one nicknamed the 'Black Mountain' by those that knew of him watched the Elite Minor drop to the ground and slide to a halt just a handful of inches away from his armored feet with a cold-fury burning in his dark eyes._

 _Fourteen year old Naruto Uzumaki, also known as Sierra-419, let out a quiet, almost beastial growl that rumbled in his throat and chest as his eyes flicked back up to the Sangheili ranks further down the dust-shrouded street, the right half of his HUD retaining its operational use despite the severe damage his helmet had sustained along the left side. He had been bred to be far stronger and more 'durable' than any previous Spartan 'generation'. Even when set shoulder-to-shoulder with a SPARTAN-II, the supposed 'strongest' of Spartan generations, it was obvious that the SPARTAN-VI, only a fraction 'bigger' than a SPARTAN-II, was the more fearsome and ferocious of the two different 'breeds'._

 _He was Naruto Uzumaki, Sierra-419, lone survivor of the 'failed' SPARTAN-VI Program's surgical and biochemical augmentations, and sole bearer of the MJOLNIR Mark-VII '445 Super Wide' armor suit that had been simply designated 'Olympus'. He had been bred to be stronger, faster, tougher than any Spartan ever 'made' by the UNSC. He was called the 'Perfect' Spartan, the UNSC's 'perfect weapon'..._

 _And he was currently pointed at the primarily-Sangheili forces that had broken away from the Covenant..._

Apart from opening his eyes, Naruto showed no outward sign of his dream-memory having any adverse effects on him. Clad in his bodysuit, black cargo pants, and boots, Naruto stayed where he had been for the past hour as he waited for his team mates to arrive; standing up and leaning back against the wall behind him, his arms crossed over his chest and head tilted down. It had only been a 'power nap', at most, but the short bit of sleep he got out of it was enough to make up for his lack of rest last night.

Thinking back on the memory, Naruto slowly ran the tips of his right index and middle fingers along the scar that now crossed his face. Even after so long, it still burned on occassion, but he knew it to be phantom pains, having suffered some nerve damage from the injury. He had absolutely no feeling along the scar's length, the plasma blade of the Zealot's Energy Sword having burned them away almost immediately. Because of the glancing blow and burned nerves, Naruto had felt only about half as much pain, if not a bit less, than what he should have felt considering the weapon he had been injured with. It was, possibly, the only 'good thing' about being wounded by a Covenant Energy Sword...

"There he is!" A familiar voice called out from further down the road, snapping Naruto out of his thoughts as his eyes jumped up from the ground in front of him to the source. As excited and energetic as ever, Ruby was lightly jogging along the sidewalk in his direction, a beaming grin on her face as she waved to the veteran soldier. Following behind her were the three other members of Team RWBYN. "Naruto! You showed up!"

"Of course, I did. Why wouldn't I?" Naruto questioned in return as he pushed away from the wall, the group of four girls coming to a stop in front of him. Even as the words left his mouth, Naruto 'casually' put his hands behind his back, his forearms lightly pressing into his lower back with his hands kept at his elbows; his right hand was unnoticably clenched rather tight in comparison to his loosely closed left hand, resisting the all-too-familiar 'itch' for a gun to shoot. Little did he realize, he was falling prey to the not-so-noticable and subtle side of Post-Traumatic Stress, something even a Spartan could fall victim to...

"It's just, you never came back last night." Yang remarked, catching Naruto's attention. "What were you doing all night?"

"...Testing some new upgrades I've been installing into my armor." Naruto responded as calmly and stoicly as always, resorting to a half-truth to keep the four girls from learning of his occassional White Fang 'hunts'. "Now, Ruby; you said something about us...having 'fun' today? Just what did you have in mind?"

"It's a surprise." The youngest of the group chirped in response, still grinning broadly at the Spartan...

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	5. Chapter 5

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto, Halo, or RWBY.

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Black Steel

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Chapter Five

" _This_...is what you had in mind?" Naruto rhetorically asked of their team leader from the back of the group. Despite his usual stocism and ever-unchanging facial expression, Naruto was actually caught between mild disinterest like Blake, slight annoyance about having to walk almost two miles to reach their current location just as Weiss was, and a hint of uncertainty; he wasn't a fan of large crowds.

"Oh, come on, Naruto!" Yang piped up with a grin on her face as she turned to face her fellow blonde. "Don't be such a sourpuss. It'll be fun!"

"I do not like crowds." Naruto returned flatly, the buxom blonde girl's reassurances doing nothing to change his opinion on the matter at hand.

"Neither do I." Blake commented from off to the side.

"You dragged us half-way across Vale..." Weiss began slowly as she closed her eyes and took a depp breath to calm herself down; it wasn't working. "...for a stupid little fair?!"

"Hey! It is _not_ stupid!" Ruby shot back before crossing her arms over her chest and turning part-ways away from the Schnee heiress, pouting childishly. "And it's not a fair; it's a fundraiser..."

"A fundraiser?" Blake inquired with a touch of curiosity. "What for?"

"Signal Academy sponsors and hosts events like this two or three times a year." Yang answered in her younger half-sister's stead. "The money they raise goes towards helping some of their less-fortunate students with paying their tuition fees, help fund some of the Academy's extra-curricular activities and classes, and even help some of their students get a hold of certain parts for their weapons that they normally wouldn't be able to get."

"Really?" Weiss spoke up softly with sincere astounishment and interest. She then frowned slightly. "Guardian Academy never did anything like that back in Atlas. You either had your family's financial backing to supply you with what you needed or you were left to fend for yourself."

"Everything comes at a price." Naruto commented idly, mostly just thinking out loud, but it drew the Schnee's focus onto him. Before either could say anything, they were interrupted.

"Oh! They're giving out free cookies over there!" Ruby suddenly cried out before taking off with the intent to get as many of them as she could. Smirking slightly, Blake rolled her eyes at Ruby's child-like behavior as she started wandering off herself, having caught the scent of a food vendor selling fish nearby.

"And _that's_ why Dad forbid any kind of sweets in the house..." Yang remarked joking from beside Naruto as they watched the youngest member of their team rush straight for the baked goods stand giving out the cookies while Weiss started walking away in search of something that might interest her.

"I'll...keep that in mind." Naruto responded slowly, not really knowing how to properly react to the comment. That was when something caught the Spartan's attention and mild curiousity. It was one of the many attractions that made up the 'entertainment' portion of Signal Academy's fundraiser; a shooting gallery game, to be specific. Noticing how Naruto was now staring off to the side, Yang followed his line of sight before spotting the game stand herself.

"Heh...And you said you wouldn't find anything here that you'd like." The blonde girl commented while glancing up at Naruto's face out of the corner of her eye, smirking.

"I do not remember saying that..." Naruto pointed out with a slightly raised eye brow.

"You didn't...but you were _thinking_ it. Now get going. I'm going to go check out what some of the vendors are selling this year; I usually get a cute little souvenir whenever me and Ruby come to these things." Yang responded with one of her trademark flirty grins as she started backing away from the towering titan of a teenager that was her team mate. "Oh, and Naruto?" Remember to have _fun_ while we're here, okay?"

"Hn." Naruto grunted out throatily, yet quietly, as he turned and started walking away as well. Nonetheless, a faint smirk tugged at the corner of his mouth as he gave Yang a slight wave over his shoulder. "I make no promises..."

 _'Oh, I am SO jealous of you right now, Blake.'_ Yang thought to herself, pouting childishly in her head while smirking slightly on the outside as she watched Naruto wade through the dense crowd of patrons that choked the pathways and spaces between the fundraiser's many tents, stalls, stands, and gazebos that littered the grounds of one of Vale's parks. Finally turning around after losing sight of her fellow blonde, Yang began her search for a suitable momento to symbolize Team RWBYN's first little 'outing' together. _'I want to sleep in those strong arms, too...'_

xXx

For the first time in a year, fifteen year old Naomi Namikaze found herself smiling out of genuine happiness. It was only the second fundraiser she'd attended since she had enrolled into Signal Academy two years ago, but Naomi had a strange gut-feeling that something was going to happen that day. It wasn't exactly a 'bad' feeling, but it still didn't quite feel like a wholly 'good' one either. Standing at about six-foot-four, the almost 'freakishly' tall girl dismissed it as her nerves making her jittery and paranoid...

The first time she had gone to one of Signal's fundraisers, Naomi had gone with her family just a couple months before... _that_ day. She hadn't been to one since, doing her best to bury her pain and grief under her training and studies. Shedn't even intended to go to the current one, but that was when she had gotten that weird gut-feeling about it.

Plus, she'd been personally invited by a rather cute boy she liked that wasn't the slightest bit bothered about her being so unusually tall; her family's Semblance was to blame for that particular glaring trait. Her parents had called it 'Hoplite's Shield', something that was mostly a passive body-enhancing 'ability' that naturally developed over time, usually starting around the time they would hit puberty. Primarily, it enhanced their muscles to their full potential, made their bones incredibly strong, and even enhanced their internal organs and biology. It wasn't exactly a bad thing, but the 'price' was them growing really tall.

From what she understood about it, her family's Semblance dated as far back as the earliest forms of known recorded history. Supposedly, it was a somewhat common Semblance amongst several different ancestral bloodlines back then due to the rather primitive and harsh environment people had to survive in, but as the centuries began to pass, Hoplite's Shield started showing up less and less people as advancements in technology allowed them to make safer settlements, which eventually led to Remnant's Four Kingdoms. Eventually, the Semblance thinned out quite drastically over the past couple centuries until only a small number of people in the world carried the gene for it.

Naomi still thought it was a little weird when she found out that her parents were very distantly related, though it explained how they both had the Hoplite's Shield Semblance. From what her parents had told her in the past, it had been entirely random and coincidental that they had met, both shocked beyond belief to find someone else that had the same Semblance as them. Since they both carried the genes for the body-enhancing Semblance and 'thick enough' blood for it to fully awaken in either of them, the Hoplite's Shield had been successfully passed on to her and...her brother...

"Naomi? Is something wrong?" Naomi's crush/date questionedly worriedly from beside her, having noticed the odd look on her face. Being quite tall himself, Ryan O'Ceros was a Rhino Faunus that stood at six-foot-five with a six-inch rhinoceros horn jutting out of his forehead from just below his hair line.

"Huh? Oh, n-no...I was just..." Naomi stammered slightly before trailing off towards the end, trying her best to keep from crying and succeeding for the most part. "I was just thinking about my brother. That's all..."

"They never found him, did they?" Ryan asked hesitantly and quietly, not wanting to unintentionally upset the one girl that didn't care that he was a Faunus or even mind the light grey horn sticking out of his forehead. As an added bonus, he thought Naomi was one of the most beautiful girls, both in mind and body, that he had ever had the privilege of meeting and getting to know.

Naomi had slightly shaggy/spiky blood red hair that she kept styled in a pixie undershave with the hair on top of her head being just long enough to completely cover her left eye, stopping an inch or two past her left cheek bone. Cutting through her scarlet bangs was a single solid streak of naturally occuring golden blonde hair; she knew better, but Naomi liked to believe that it was a part of her brother living on through her.

Her silky smooth skin had a healthy bronze coloring to it from constantly being out in the sun, something that only accented her vibrant crimson and gold hair while greatly enhancing the beauty of Ryan's favorite feature about her; Naomi's startlingly bright cyan blue eyes that bore thin rings of dark blue around her pupils and along the outer edges of her irises.

Currently dressed in some casual clothes for once, Naomi was clad in a pair of black and grey camouflage cargo capri pants with bright bubblegum pink stitching along all of the seams, a black body-hugging tank top that left a sliver of her trim midriff exposed with a bubblegum pink stylized hurricane decorating the back of the top, simple black sneakers with bright pink anklet socks on her feet, and black fingerless leather gloves on her hands.

"No, they didn't..." Naomi answered softly as Signal Academy's two biggest 'heavy hitters' ducked into a narrow and so-far untrafficked pathway between two large tents. Despite her lean 'Amazonian' feminine muscular build, imposing stature, and 'punk-ish' fashion sense, Naomi was actually a kind-hearted and gentle-souled girl towards her friends...her family, prior to their deaths. "But what if he's still alive, Ryan? If he is, then why hasn't he come home? Why hasn't he tried to at least contact me and let me know that he's okay?!"

"Naomi...Please, calm down." Ryan urged softly while gently gripping Naomi's upper arms with her large hands, her naturally diamond-hard muscles constrasting heavily her warm and velvet-soft skin; he pushed aside those thoughts for another more appropriate time. "I didn't mean to upset you. I'm sorry."

"I...I know you didn't, Ryan. I'm sorry for freaking out." Naomi apologized in return, taking a brief moment to dry the few tears that had welled up in her eyes. "It's just...I really miss him, Ryan. He was always looking out for me and taking care of me whenever Mom and Dad were out on missions or something."

"He sounds like he was a really good brother to you." Ryan admitted softly with a slight smile. "I wish I could have met him."

"I wish you could have met him, too." Naomi agreed with a small, though sad smile of her own. "You two would have been really good friends."

It was in that moment that Naomi idly decided to glance over the Rhino Faunus she was with. Broad in both his chest and his shoulders, Ryan had a moderately 'thick' muscular build and light caramel colored skin. He had short and messy snow white hair while his eyes were a golden amber color, a common trait among most Faunus.

As he usually was, Ryan was wearing a pair of baggy dark brown pants held up with a black leather belt and the leggings tucked into his black knee-high combat boots. Light grey armor plates were strapped over his thighs with black leather belts while similar plates covered the 'shins', heels, toes, and tops of his boots. His upper body was clothed with a black skin-tight underarmor turtleneck top and a dark brown tactical flak vest over it that had light grey armor plates covering most of it, a light grey cloth hood was attached to the vest's collar, and large bulky supply pouches set along his lower back. His hands and forearms were encased with fingerless dark brown leather gauntlets that were covered with more light grey armor plates.

Left hanging around his neck for the moment was a dark brown cloth face mask with light grey armor plating on it while a pair of black-framed goggles hung from his right hip. Set at an angle across his back was his devastatingly powerful and _very_ heavy long-shafted battle hammer that bore a semi-circular axe blade on the back of the hammer's head, a number of tiny holes littering the sides and top of the weapon's 'business end'. The one-hundred-fifty pound 'brutish' weapon was Ryan's Dust-Propelled Battle Hammer, a weapon of his own design that he affectionately called 'Earth-Breaker'...

"Well, now that he's finally been brought up in a conversation, why don't you tell me a little about your brother?" Ryan requested a little curiously since Naomi had never really talked about her family, her brother especially, since the accident. Almost immediately, the red and gold haired girl looked rather uncertain and a little more than 'slightly' nervous, still being pretty emotional at the moment. His curiousity faultered a second later. "I-If you don't want to talk about him, we don-"

"N-No, Ryan, I _do_ have to do this." Naomi interrupted, crossing her leanly 'solid' arms over her still-blooming large B-cup, small C-cup bust. As she leaned back again a suitably sturdy support beam for one of the tents on either side of them, Naomi closed her eyes and bowed her head slightly, a couple tears escaping her 'grasp' and gliding down her cheeks as she did. "I...I can't keep clinging to false hopes. I need to...I need to accept that my bi...that my big b-brother w-won't ever be c-coming b-back ho-home..."

"Come on. Let's sit down and you can tell me all about him." Ryan suggested as he led the now teary-eyed Naomi over to a nearby bench to sit down, setting his Earth-Breaker hammer down beside it. Nodding weakly and hesitantly, Naomi did as her friend wanted, sniffling quite a bit and doing her absolute best not to break down completely. "Thank you...Now, what's his name? I don't think you've ever told me what it was."

"H-His..." Naomi trailed off and stayed silent for several seconds as she tried calming down a little more. "His name was Naruto Namikaze. He's older than me by about two, two and a half years...At least, he _used_ to be. He'd seventeen right now; a few months away from turning eighteen, actually..."

"Oh, so he's almost three years older than you? Wow." Ryan commented idly. "So, did he wear armor like you or your parents used to?"

"He wore armor, but Naruto was just like our Dad; a natural genius when it came to technology and he loved to tinker. Our Dad came up with the idea for our armor suits and built his own, our Mom's, and mine, but not my brother's." The 'sole' Namikaze answered softly, finally calm enough to keep herself from stuttering, hyperventilating, or freaking out in general. "No, my big brother was unique. While Dad had balanced out our suits' weight-to-strength ratio so that our armor actually made us stronger and faster with moderate protection, Naruto had built his own armor specifically for heavy combat. He had designed it to take the brunt of most enemy attacks with minimal damage to the suit before crushing the opposition as swiftly and heavily as possible."

"You...You mean to tell me that your brother took a suit of highly advanced _power armor_ and made it _stronger_?!" The Rhino Faunus exclaimed in shock; he knew how strong Naomi's suit made her. It made her _more_ than strong enough to beat him in single combat. Just Naomi's power, when wearing her armor, honestly scared the shit out of him. He did even want to _imagine_ the raw, devastating power her brother had possessed with his 'super armor'...

"That was my brother; always tinkering with _something_ , trying to make it better. He definitely took after Dad more than anything..." Naomi responded, even letting out a couple weak giggles at a funny memory before sighing tiredly. "My brother's suit, 'Olympus', was designed and built primarily for defense; more armor covering more of his body, heavier and more durable metals replaced the original metal composite our Dad used for our suits, a stronger energy shield with a _slightly_ weaker secondary 'auxillary' shield, the most advanced sensors and telecommunication technology he could find...He always went _above and beyond_ 'over kill' when he built his suit."

"I've got a feeling that there's a really big 'but' coming up..." Ryan remarked idly, knowing that everything had a downside to it. Seeing his uneasiness in her crush's body language, Naomi couldn't resist the small giggle that escaped her.

"You're right. There was a price to him upgrading his suit so heavily. Naruto had scrapped a few of the original systems our Dad had come up with and replaced them with entirely different ones. He sacrificed almost _half_ of his suit's original potential in mobility and speed for more armor plating, more advanced and more powerful strength amplification systems, and a high-powered internal computer system built directly into the suit to autonomously operate certain systems like the sensor array and whatever else he had built into it." Naomi explained to the Faunus beside her. "His suit was so heavily armored that it weighed almost fifty percent _more_ than mine or our parents' armor did. Where our armor weighed somewhere between seven and nine hundred pounds, my brother's armor weighed in at about one-thousand-five-hundred pounds. Despite being so heavy and slow, my brother was virtually unstoppable once he started moving."

"Fif...Fifteen hundred pounds?!" Ryan cried out in disbelief, his eyes wide with absolute shock. "There's just no way he could possibly _move_ , let alone _fight_ while wearing three-quarters of a ton of soild metal!"

"Hehehe...Are you finished?" Naomi asked teasingly with another giggle. The normally calm and collected Faunus could only stammer unintelligibly for a moment before starting to pout childishly, his cheeks flush with an indignant blush as he stubbornly glared off to the side. She couldn't help it; she started laughing. Hearing Naomi laugh, Ryan suddenly forgot about why he was upset, the girl's laughter being quite pleasant sounding to the Rhino Faunus's ears. He couldn't resist smiling fondly at Naomi as she kept laughing...

At least she wasn't crying anymore...

xXx

"Another victory for our mighty champion!" Someone called out over the drone of the crowd, catching Naruto's attention as he left the third shooting gallery game he'd gone to...and beat their previous high scores. "Do we have another challenger?!"

"Challenger...?" The Spartan mumbled under his breath while wading through the crowd to find out what was going on. It didn't take long for him to find the source. Seated at a small table was a heavily muscled man while a much smaller man stood atop a stump. From the looks of a few guys holding their arms, Naruto guessed it was an arm wrestling contest. Before he knew it, he was being singled out...

"You there! You look like you could give Heracles here a good match!" The little man called out, pointing directly at Naruto. Feeling a little confused, the towering blonde glanced to either side of him before looking back to the short announcer and pointing at himself with a raised eye brow. "Yes, you! Now get over here!"

"...I'm not responsible for any broken bones." Naruto mumbled just loud enough enough for those around him to hear as he stepped forward and took a seat across from the one named Heracles.

"You? Break _my_ bones?" The burly man parroted with a grin before laughing heartily; Naruto could tell the man stood a good three inches taller than himself. "I don't think it'll be my bones that get broken here today, kid!"

"..." Naruto merely narrowed his eyes at the 'kid' remark. A moment later, there was a rather loud thud as his right elbow connected with the table, still glaring at the larger man as the cold fires of his past burned in his dark blue irises. "You going to keep talking trash...or are we going to do this?"

"Heh! Eager for a defeat, aren't you?" Heracles retorted smugly as he set his own right arm on the table. As the two gripped one another's hand, the short announcer raised one hand up in the air. "What's your name, kid?"

"Are both contestants ready?!" He called out. Naruto's eyes narrowed ever so slightly more before they both nodded to the anouncer.

"Naruto Uzumaki." The blonde grunted out before the announcer chopped his hand down.

"Begin!" The little man cried. Smirking smugly still, Heracles wanted to make an example of Naruto and put a good bit of his strength behind his initial move, but...Naruto's hand didn't so much as budge nor did the blonde bat an eye lash. Heracles's eyes widened in shock when he realized that his opponent wasn't moving in the slightest.

"Don't ever..." Naruto growled out just quiet enough for the larger man to hear him before forcing Heracles's arm further and further back. Arm shaking slightly and gritting his teeth, Heracles couldn't help looking from their conjoined hands to Naruto's cold, unflinching stare. "Call me _Kid_..."

 _WHAM!_

"What a shocker! Heracles has been _defeated_!" The announcer cried after a couple seconds of silence. Feeling his 'fame' slipping from him, Heracles resorted to the words of a desperate loser.

"He...He cheated! He had to!" The man declared before jumping to his feet. "I demand a rematch!"

 _Thump_. Naruto didn't so much as blink as he set his arm back on the table; he was _mad_ now. Little did he know, there was someone in the crowd staring at the blonde as if they had just seen a ghost.

"Naomi? What's wrong?" Ryan questioned from beside the red and gold haired girl before following her line of sight.

"That's...That's Naruto..." She whispered, sounding as if she couldn't believe her own eyes.

"You mean _that's_ your brother?" Ryan reitterated, partly out of shock and partly out of hesitance; Naruto didn't exactly have a 'friendly' appeal to him.

"I...I don't know. I mean, he looks almost exactly like him, but..." Naomi hesitated herself, seeing the dark look in her wayward brother's eyes. "I don't remember him having that scar on his face...and he never seemed so...brutal before."

"No one calls me a 'cheater' and walks away unharmed..." Naruto growled quietly just as the announcer started their second match. Heracles barely had time for his eyes to widen at the implications of the remark before the blonde haired towering teen gripped his hand tight enough for people to hear an audible crack. In that same instant, he put enough strength into his arm to not only slam Heracles's hand down on the table in the blink of an eye, but also smash the table to splinters and send Heracles to the ground. The bigger man let out a brief strangled cry of pain as he clutched his hand and wrist to his chest, both having obviously been injured, while Naruto calmly stood up and started walking away.

The crowd parted without resistance to let him pass while the announcer rushed to check on his 'money maker'. As he left, however, Naruto got a strange feeling and glanced off to the side. Spotting a red haired girl that was a little shorter than himself, Naruto felt a sudden nagging sensation in the back of his mind, almost as if he should know who she was, but couldn't. Ignoring it, he looked forward again and kept walking.

"Should we...go after him?" Ryan asked, but Naomi didn't respond. She was rooted to her spot.

"He...doesn't recognize me..." She murmured quietly in heartache, her eyes glued to the retreating form of her brother...

 _"Fall back!" The troop commander ordered urgently over the comm-link, a Covenant CSS Cruiser hovering over-head as it charged up its main vertically oriented energy beam. Sierra-419 could only stare up at it for a couple seconds. "They're glassin' the place!"_

"Ngh!" Naruto grunted as he held his head with one hand while stumbling down an untrafficked pathway once he was out of sight, trying to get away from the crowd and to somewhere isolated. That nagging sensation had exploded into a sharp pain in his head, forcing old memories to the surface of his mind along with generating memories that he'd never had before...

 _"So you exchanged the speed amplification motors for better weight stabilizers and stronger shock absorbers?" A blonde haired man inquired curiously before giving him a small look of pride. "Nice, but how are you going to keep up with faster opponents?"_

 _"I won't have to." Naruto answered calmly. "That's why I have Brunhilda."_

"Stop..." Naruto hissed out quietly. "Get out...of my head."

 _"Naruto! What's wrong?!"_ Kurama questioned with worry from her spot on his left arm, her DC Chip flickering in time with her words. Naruto didn't answer as another flash of memory blitzed through his mind.

 _"INCOMING!" One of the ODSTs in the area called out just moments before several plasma projectiles from Covenant Wraiths slammed into the surrounding area. Sierra-419 didn't even flinch as he smashed through a concrete wall with a shoulder charge, one of the massive energy blasts crashing through the second floor of the small building the lone SPARTAN-VI had charged through._

Then there was another immediately after...

 _"Spartans...never die. Isn't that right...Naruto?" Lieutenant Sakura wheezed out with a wry smirk despite her collapsed lung, having been hit by a metal crate that had been sent flying by a Hunter's cannon fire. Sierra-419 didn't know how to react as he stared at the one person that had been with him since the beginning. Seeing something behind him, Sakura pushed away from the wall she was leaning against and pushed the heavily armored Spartan with everything she had. Stumbling back more out of surprise than anything, Sierra-419 could only watch as Sakura sealed the blast doors between them, smiling at him through the closing gap even as the baleful green energy of a Hunter's plasma cannon smashed into her..._

 _"Let's keep it that way!" She shouted at him just before the doors slammed shut..._

"Gah!" Naruto gasped out from both psychological pain and from tripping over his own feet, falling to his hands and knees. Holding his head with a hand again, the blonde felt another foreign memory forcing its way into his head. "S-Sakura..."

 _"Alright, gear up, son. We're almost to the drop point." A female Spartan clad in a suit of Copperhead armor instructed as she checked her twin submachine guns. Another Spartan, dressed in black and grey Hunter armor, nudged his arm reassuringly as they grabbed their Battle Rifle._

 _"Chin up, son. This may be your final test, but we'll be nearby just in case things get to be too much for you." The 'Hunter' Spartan remarked, getting a scoff from the 'Copperhead' Spartan._

 _"Stop treating him like a little kid, Minato." The woman scolded lightly. "This is just a proper field test for his armor, not a battle. He can take care of himself."_

 _"Naruto!"_ Kurama called out to him again, but Naruto didn't react. Forcing himself back to his feet, Naruto started walking again, only for it to turn to jogging before gradually working its way up to a full-blown run. He didn't know where he was going and he didn't care. He just needed to get away from everyone, find a place that was quiet and isolated.

"...Naruto?" Weiss murmured to herself as she watched the blonde run past her at astounding speeds, but it was the pained look on his face that caught her worry. Not even thinking to contact the others, Weiss immediately gave chase. It didn't take her long to realize that she wasn't going to be able to keep up like she was. Thus, she started using her Glyphs to at least keep Naruto in her sight as she raced after him. She could only imagine what it was that was hurting the soldier-like blonde so much...

xXx

 _"What the hell is going on with you, Naruto!?"_ Kurama demanded from her spot, powerless to stop the Spartan and incapable of helping him with whatever it was that was afflicting him. _"Why'd you break that man's hand?! Why are you running?!"_

 _"Don't you think you over did it a bit with all of the armor plating, bro?" A red and blonde haired girl questioned from off to the side as he finished equipping the last of his Olympus suit, his helmet left hanging at his left hip..._

 _'Who was that girl? Why'd she look so familiar?'_ They were only a few of the questions flying around in his hurting head like a hurricane as he kept running. _'What the fuck is happening to me?!'_

Without noticing it, he ran across a busy street, finally looking to the side at the sound of a horn just in time to see the car that was a split second after from hitting him. Reflexively reacting to it, Naruto kicked off the ground slightly and tilted his right shoulder down, tucking his head down with his left hand covering the back of his head and his right covering Kurama.

"NARUTO!" Weiss screamed with wide, fearful eyes as she watched Naruto get hit by a car, watching as his black-clad form tumbled over the top of the vehicle and hit the ground while the car swerved to a sudden halt immediately after. Despite her exhaustion from chasing the incredibly fast blonde for nearly two miles so far, Weiss pushed herself to move faster than ever before, rushing to her team mate's side.

"Ngh..." Grunting quietly, Naruto slowly pushed himself up to his hands and knees, his ears ringing and body aching, feeling as if he had just been smashed through a wall by a charging Hunter. Something he'd experienced once before. Blinking slowly, Naruto simply stared at the ground numbly as a couple drops of blood dripped from a cut above his right eye. Forcing himself to his feet, Naruto stumbled dizzily, disoriented and unbalanced after the impact.

"Hey, are you okay?!" The driver that had hit him asked frantically, caught between looking at the towering blonde he'd just hit and the damage done to their car; the windshield was completely smashed in, the front bumper and hood heavily dented along with the roof. It looked almost as if it had been hit by another car.

"Naruto!" Weiss yelled out once more before coming a stop beside the hunched over blonde, looking him over worriedly for any serious injuries. "Are you okay? Is anything broken? Oh, my god! You're bleeding!"

"I...think you should...call an ambulance..." Naruto almost slurred numbly, his vision blurring and steadily growing darker. "I think...I'm about to...pass out..."

"What?" Weiss asked in confusion before Naruto tipped forward, barely managing to catch the blonde before he could fall completely, but he was too heavy for her and only knocked her down with him. "Naruto? Naruto! Wake up!"

Thankfully, she could hear the wailing siren of an ambulance in the distance, a bystander having obviously called for help...

xXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXx

A/N: And there you go! The fifth chapter of Black Steel! Starting from the top, we finally find out what Ruby was planning last chapter. And also, (Remnant) Naruto's sister has been revealed! Along with a little more backstory for their family and even their 'Semblance'. They've seen each other, one seeing a ghost while another sees only a mystery. Haunted by his past and the past of 'another', how will Naruto react? And what will become of him after being hit by a car?

You'll have to wait until next chapter! The mighty CLIFFHANGER demands it! Also, Happy holidays and merry christmas to all of my avid readers and followers and even the nasty little rats scurrying about in the shed out back!


	6. Chapter 6

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto, Halo, or RWBY.

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Black Steel

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Chapter Six

"Weiss!" Ruby called out frantically as she, Yang, and Blake rushed to regroup with their friend and team mate...in the hospital lobby, of all places. "What happened? Is Naruto okay?"

"T-The doctor said the impact only caused a concussion and some heavy bruising." Weiss answered with a faint stutter in the beginning, barely keeping herself from freaking out; it was a terrifying thing, watching one's friend get hit by a car. "They said he'll be fine, but they want to hold him over night to keep an eye on him."

"That's...That's it?" Yang questioned out of surprise and confusion, but her concern for their team mate was still clear in her tone. "He gets hit by a car and that's all that happens to him? What is he made of? Steel?"

"Can we see him?" Ruby asked worriedly, getting a shake of her head from Weiss.

"He's still heavily sedated." The heiress responded before recieving looks of shock and confusion from the others; she had the same reaction earlier. She hesitated, however. She didn't want to worry the others any more than they already were, but she had already let something slip. "He...He was unconscious when the ambulance arrived, but..."

"But _what_ , Weiss?" Blake suddenly questioned as she stook a half-step closer to the Schnee, catching the others off guard with the intensity of her tone of voice. She was surprised by it as well...and a little confused. Even still, the Cat Faunus continued. "What happened to Naruto?"

"During the ride to the hospital, Naruto started...acting weird." Weiss offered in return, but without any real detail. She herself was having a hard time believing it. "He was unconscious, but...he seemed to be reliving some kind of memory. Whatever it was, it wasn't good. One of the paramedics had his forearm broken in Naruto's grip and another had three of her ribs cracked before they could get him sedated. They don't know how or why, but Naruto's body is many times more durable than a normal person's and highly resistant to certain medications like tranquilizers...They said that even without his bodysuit, which turned out to be armored and highly protective, Naruto probably wouldn't have even broken a bone in the accident."

"W-Wait...Earlier you said he was unconscious, but still managed to take out two paramedics because of some kind of bad memory or nightmare before they knocked him out?" Yang spoke up, looking all the more confused, yet still equally concerned. "You mean he has...like PTSD or something?"

"I don't know..." Weiss admitted weakly and quietly as she wrapped her arms around her middle and slowly sunk into a nearby chair. Keeping her head bowed, Weiss closed her eyes and looked almost as if she were trying to shrink into herself. "They wouldn't tell me anything else...and I only know about what happened in the ambulance because I saw it myself."

"He..." Ruby hesitated before sitting down beside her partner and wrapping an arm around the white haired girl's shoulders comfortingly. "He'll be okay. The doctors said it themselves; he's a lot tougher than he appears."

Standing off to the side and leaning back against a wall, Blake kept her eyes on the ground and her arms crossed over her middle, thinking of everything she knew about Naruto, which was admittedly very little. On a physical level, he was nothing short of a tank in relation to his size, armament, skill, and prowess in battle. On a psychological level, however, he was...broken. The 'Titan' wasn't devoid of emotion, but he definitely had no experience in terms of handling or even understanding what emotions were. He was an empty shell...

When she first heard of him, she thought the stories were over-exaggerated. When she first saw him, she felt that he was being sorely underestimated and that he was going _easy_ on them. After seeing him at Beacon, she feared him. When they had spoken back in the garage that same day, however...Blake realized that he was lost. Alone. Almost...confused, as if he didn't know what to do with himself, but...he was strong. Strong enough to keep going forward, never entertaining the thought of ever going backwards or even stopping.

The only two reasons she had originally allowed herself to lower her guard around him were now the same that kept drawing her towards him on multiple levels. His mettle and fortitude...and his imperfections. She felt compelled to _fix_ him, in a manner of speaking, and in a way, she was indirectly fixing herself without notice. When Weiss had called them and told them that Naruto had been hurt...

"Blake?" Yang asked, snapping Blake from her thoughts. "You okay?"

"...Yeah." She answered slowly. "Just thinking."

xXx

 _He was on his own when it happened. He didn't have any back up. His armor wasn't finished. His family was elsewhere. The only weapons he had on hand were his combat knife and his personal sidearm, Anastasia. Drawing his blade from behind his waist with his left hand and holding it in a reverse-grip, he drew his pistol from the holster strapped to his right thigh. Flames burned at everything around him, but he didn't feel the heat of their hungry lashing tongues. The harrowing orchestra of terrified screams and chaos was deafening, but he didn't hear it. Because of the training his parents had been putting him through, he immediately focused in on the threat, the enemy. The village didn't have a defence force of its own. He was by himself. He had to protect the town, save as many as he could. Without a moment of hesitation, he sprinted forward at full speed, his heavy black combat boots hammering the paved street._

 _Dressed in only a pair of baggy dark grey cargo fatigues and a white skin-tight tank top, he was completely unguarded from injury. The polished silver blade of his knife glinted a menacing red-orange in the fire-glow as the sky only darkened with night. Closing the gap between him and the first of the Beowolves, he didn't so much as glance at the black beast as he darted to the left to bypass it. Jumping up just enough to clear the low sweeping swing of its clawed paws, he held his pistol out and aimed at the monstrousity's right temple, the muzzle of the gun being mere inches from its target. A single trigger squeeze perfected by countless hours of practice preceeded the flash of muzzle-flare and the crack of a gunshot, both quickly followed by the sudden jerking of the Beowolf's head as the bullet tore through its skull._

 _Dropping into a shoulder roll the moment his booted feet hit the ground, he avoided the second Beowolf's claws with only a couple centimeters of space to spare, but he promptly spun in a crouch and slashed the back of its legs with his knife while raising his pistol again. Putting a bullet through the temple of a third Beowolf before it could pounce upon a nearby mother and her young child, he kicked off the ground into a backflip to avoid a fourth as it lunged at him while he was 'distracted'. Landing back on his feet, he shot the second Beowolf in the head before doing the same with the fourth. Spinning around as he ducked down slightly, he kicked the legs out from another werewolf-esque Grimm, rendering it airborne for a split second; all the time he needed._

 _With a left-handed straight punch, he planted his fist into the Beowolf's chest with as much power as he could manage without the amplifications of his still-incomplete armor. As the beast was launched into another, both fell back far enough to be hit full-on by a cargo truck that was speeding to get away from the carnage laying waste to the town, the impact killing both creatures in an instant. Instincts kicking in, he spun on his heel and kicked off the ground, waisting no time to hook his left foot on the side of yet another Beowolf's neck, his pistol already trained on the foul soul-less entity. In that same moment, the two locked eyes, both pairs being absolutely devoid of emotion. Three short-lived explosions of sound later, the Beowolf was sent flying to the side from the kick with three holes in its chest, its body already starting to dissolve. He spun back around just in time to see..._

Naruto's eyes snapped open as the impossibly vivid dream ended abuptly. It had been only one of many. They were memories he did remember, memories of himself, but...from a different life. They were scattered with no real sense of chronological order to them. One minute, he's 'reliving' a memory back when he was a kid and the next he's in his teens battling Grimm. Things only became harder on him when memories of his time in the UNSC started mixing in with them, leaving him disoriented and confused. The memories were from two conflicting and completely different lives, but he only remembered living one of them. Why was he seeing things he had never experienced before? Who was that girl back at the fair, the one that had triggered the memories? Better yet...

Who was _he_?

The first thing he noticed was the almost blinding whiteness and sharp scent of antiseptic cleaners; a hospital room. He was stripped of his bodysuit and other personal items, currently clad in a hospital patient's gown and lying on a hospital bed with the usual array of monitoring equipment set around him. What truly caught his attention, however, was the presence of a Vale guardsman, armed with a standard-issue sidearm and rifle, standing outside the door to his room. Feeling something on either of his wrists, Naruto glanced down at either of his hands with narrowed eyes; cuffs. The last thing he remembered was getting hit by a car and...seeing Weiss, but that was about it before the memory dreams started. That begged the question as to why he was not only restrained, but also placed under armed guard...

 _'I need to locate my things.'_ He mused momentarily, glancing around the room. Luckily, he spotted what looked like his bodysuit and pants folded up and set on top of a table across the room to the side, his boots set on the floor beneath it. Glancing over the side-rails his cuffs were mounted to, the blonde Spartan scoffed quietly with irritation; it was not smart to cuff someone like him to pieces of flimsy metal. Gripping the rail on his right, he kept an eye on the guard outside through the gap in the blinds partially covering the window that separated his room from the outside corridor. With a sharp jerk and the muffled sound of a bolt being ripped from its socket, the railing came free. The guard didn't move; the walls were possibly sound-proofed. He wasn't going to take the chance again, however, and glanced around for anything else he could use to better escape from his restraints.

A file. It was sitting on a mobile computer station of sorts most of the nurses used to keep track of patient information as they moved about the hospital. It was also just within his reach. Hospitals were also one of the few places that still relied on hard-copy information such as paperwork and files; lucky him. Reaching over with his free right hand, he snagged the lone paper clip on the file before quickly bending it just enough for him to pick the lock on his left cuff, his eyes still locked on the guard outside. Once he was free of both sets of cuffs, Naruto slipped off the bed and quickly changed back into his personal clothing, ignoring the aching pains radiating from his relatively minor injuries. Something was missing, however.

 _'Where's Kurama?!'_ He thought frantically before going to the nurse's computer station and using what semi-limited knowledge he had in hacking to break into the hospital's main computer systems. He wasn't able to get much further than basic subsystems and programs, but he was only looking for a single piece of information; the location of his AI partner. It took a few minutes, but he eventually found it..and couldn't help sighing quietly in relief. For some reason, they had relinquished it to one of his team mates. A few more moments of searching told him that it had been Blake that signed off on it. _'Good, she's the only one that knows of Kurama's existence so far. Now...what do they have on file about me?'_

It took him a minute, but he found his file. Most of it was incomplete or...out of date? How was that possible when he hadn't been to the hospital before? There was a clue, though, something that unsettled him; three names, each bearing the same last name of _Namikaze_. His father's last name...but...how? Something wasn't right. What was stranger still was that two of the names were the exact same as his actual birth-parents; Kushina and Minato. The third, he didn't recognize; Naomi. After a few moments, he discovered that both 'parents' were...dead; they had been dated as having died around the same time he had appeared in the world of Remnant...The third, Naomi, was currently residing on the island of Patch just off Vale's western coast. Once the address had been commited to memory after only a few seconds, Naruto closed out everything on the computer and wiped his cyber-trail from existence on the hospital servers, keeping others from figuring out what he had been looking for.

Step two, find a way out of the hospital. His first thought was to go out the window, but after a moment of investigation, he found himself on the eleventh or twelfth floor and no way to safely scale the building. That left the front door, but there was still the guard to deal with. Peeking through the blinds just enough to scan the surrounding corridors, Naruto narrowed his eyes ever so slightly before going to the door, the hall ways empty for the moment. Quickly opening the door, the Spartan grabbed the smaller man by the throat from behind and hauled him into the room. Shutting the door with his free hand, Naruto held the guard several inches off the ground by his throat before bringing him in close and trapping him in a head lock. The guard tried breaking free and had the towering Spartan been anyone else, the smaller soldier just might have escaped the submission hold.

A handful of seconds passed and the guard eventually stopped struggling, rendered unconscious by his inability to take in as much oxygen as he needed to stay awake. Setting the guard on the bed and cuffing the man to the rails to buy himself a few extra minutes, Naruto calmly slipped out of the room and went towards the nearest elevator. As the doors started sliding shut after he pressed the button to take him down to the ground floor, Naruto's eyes narrowed almost dangerously...

One way or another, he was going to get his questions answered...

xXx

"You heard as well, I presume?" Blake asked rhetorically of the others, appearing strangely calm despite the news they had all been made privvy to just a short while ago.

"Why would he run though?" Yang asked, crossing her arms under her bust as she leaned back against the wall. "It's not like he was in trouble or anything, right?"

"Rumor has it that he had been cuffed to the bed with a guard posted outside his room." Blake returned, glancing at her blonde haired partner. "Apparently there were some people that wanted to 'talk' to him."

"Talk to him about what, though?" Ruby inquired, both curious and worried about the giant on their team. The other three girls on the team had nothing to say in response. Steeling her resolve, Ruby became hell bent on figuring out what was going on. "Well, either way, we need to find him and make sure he's okay. Naruto may be really strong and tough, but he's still our friend and he needs our help."

"But where would we start?" Weiss cut in, making the others stop and think. She even waited a minute for them all to realize one startling fact about their lone male team mate. "We don't know anything about him. How are we supposed to find him if we don't know where to start looking?"

 _"I think I can help with that..."_ A female voice suddenly commented...from Blake's pocket. After fishing out the DC Chip, Blake held it in her hand so that everyone could see it before Kurama's avatar flickered into existence above her chip. She looked somewhere between scared, worried, and...guilty, but with a professional calmness to her. _"My name's Kurama. I've been Naruto's partner for a little more than a year and a half so far."_

"Wait, partner? What the hell is going here?!" Yang exclaimed as her eyes flashed red for a split second, irritated by the new revelation that was thoroughly confusing her. Seriously, since when did computer chips start talking? And since when did Naruto have one?

 _"What is it with blondes having short tempers when they get stressed?"_ Kurama grumbled quietly as she crossed her arms, only to sigh heavily and look back to the others with a stern look on her face. _"We don't have time for this. I'll explain everything later, but right now, I need access to a computer. If I know Naruto as well as I do, he'll have done the same, looking for information. He doesn't know much about computers beyond what he feels he needs to know to get by, so I should be able to follow his cyber-trail and find out where he's going."_

"I think I saw one earlier on my way here." Ruby spoke up, pointing back down the hall way she had come from. "Come on. It's this way."

xXx

The trip had been short, though complicated. He knew he would have quite a bit to answer for, considering the dark nature of his actions that night, but he didn't care. He needed answers. Throwing one last glance at the unconscious man that had been piloting the Bullhead prior to being 'skyjacked' by the Spartan, Naruto shut the door to it and started running, having landed at the very edge of the town where they would be safest from any Grimm attack without drawing attention to his arrival. He had also landed very close to where the girl, Naomi, lived. Even though he was unarmed and unarmored, he was more than capable of protecting himself from most anything he knew of that could attack him.

The hasty trek through the dark woodlands lasted only a few minutes due being unburdened by his heavy armor, allowing to run faster than usual; if he guessed right, he was probably running somewhere around thirty miles per hour and he wasn't even pushing himself yet. Gradually slowing as he neared his desired destination, Naruto slid to a halt at the tree line, barely winded at all as he glared at the two story house with slightly narrowed eyes. He ignored the ambient memories flashing across his mind's eye and the echoes of voices past whispering in his ears. He was focused solely on the current objective, ignoring even the phantom pain burning across his face as the memory of how he got his facial scar lingered. Without hesitating another moment, he started marching towards the building.

Grey stone walls that he somehow knew to be heavily reinforced with steel beams, the roof a spider web of metal supports shrouded in wood and thin metal plating to better protect it, windows made of thick armor-glass. The place was built like a military-grade bunker with the vague shape of a home. Parked out from was what appeared to have once been a high-performance motorcycle before it had been heavily modified and armor plated, painted in a black and grey camouflage color scheme with bright pink accents in some spots. Nearing the front door, Naruto let his eyes narrow a little more as his hands curled into tight fists, a nine-digit code flashing through his mind as he glanced at key pad next to the door. Just as he reached out to type the code in, his instincts flared.

Spinning around, he wasted no time blocking the kick aimed at his head with a forearm, his eyes widening in surprise at the strength behind it. It was as if he was fighting himself, the cloudy night blocking out the moon's illumination. Even with his optic augmentations, he couldn't readily identify his attacker due to the chaos of the brawl. Focusing back on the fight a split second later, Naruto grabbed hold of the leg with one arm and spun around, gripping the person's waist with one hand as he slammed them into the wall. At first, he thought they had been male, but the feminine grunt of suppressed pain told him otherwise. Not one to show favoritism, however, he already had his fist cocked back for a punch. Leaning to the side, the woman moved out of the way just in time to avoid Naruto's fist, causing it to smash against the stone and put a small set of spider web cracks in it.

Ignoring the pain in his hand, Naruto blocked a kick aimed at his chest with his left forearm, only to grab the back of their knee with his free hand and lift the leg up. Thrown off balance, the unknown woman pulled in on her leg while hopping up off the ground with her other leg, her left hand already cocked back for a punch. Unable to avoid it, Naruto tilted his head down, causing the woman's knuckles to crash against his forehead. Although he was a little dazed by the blow, the woman recoiled in pain as Naruto let go of her leg, giving him an opening to land a strike against her lower ribs on her left side. Doubled over by the bone-cracking strength, the girl had no chance to escape the nose-breaking knee strike that she took to the face, knocking her flat on her back. Not letting up in the slightest, Naruto dropped down on top of her, straddling her torso with her arms pinned under his knees, one hand cocked back for another punch and the other left free for a precautionary guard.

That was when a cloud moved out from in front of the shattered moon, bathing the surrounding area in a pale light...

 _'It's her...'_ Naruto thought to himself as he froze, his eyes wide with shock. The girl, Naomi, found herself in just as much shock as him, staring up at the scarred face of her older brother, ignoring the blood that came from her broken nose.

"Na...Naruto?" Naomi whispered quietly in disbelief, once again looking as if she'd just seen a ghost. If it hadn't been for Ryan being with her, she'd have thought she had just been hallucinating back during the fundraiser. Now, however, she knew she hadn't been seeing things. Snapping out of his surprise, Naruto's gaze hardened once more.

"Who _are_ you?" He hissed out quietly, yet with a hint of urgency in his words. "What is happening to me?!"

"Wha..." Naomi trailed off, however, as a multitude of things rushed through her mind in the blink of an eye. Her parents and brother had been attacked while in mid-air, the Bullhead crashing into the ground. The wreck had been destructive, but not instantly fatal for anyone in their family. She never knew he had a scar on his face until she had first seen him back in Vale just a few days ago. Could he have...gotten amnesia? Maybe seeing her the other day had triggered some kind of memory? Her split-second thoughts were cut short, however, when a shadow loomed over Naruto from behind. "RYAN, NO!"

Naruto's eyes snapped wide as he raised both of his arms up beside him, barely blocking the absurdly heavy hammer-like weapon that slammed into him, but it didn't stop it. If anything, it moved even faster with even more power behind it, sending him flying nearly a dozen meters before skidding across the ground. Somehow righting himself in mid-roll, Naruto slid the last few feet in a three-point crouch, his vision swimming slightly from clipping his head on a small rock on the ground and a glancing blow from the hammer. Having only just recovered from a concussion, Naruto wasn't surprised to feel the effects of a fresh one after taking such a heavy hit.

"You idiot! That's my _brother_!" Naomi yelled at the Rhino Faunus as she jumped back to her feet and roughly shoved the horned teen, stumbling him.

"I'm sorry, I didn't know!" He responded frantically. Before either of them could go any further, however, Naruto suddenly slammed into the Faunus's middle in a tackle, but didn't take him to the ground. Purposefully. Lifting the seven foot tall silver haired teen off the ground and hefting him over his shoulder, Naruto fell backwards with him and slammed Ryan into the ground under him; the blow to the head had triggered another memory, a bad one. Now, all he saw was red, his mind locked in battle mode. Before Ryan could recover, Naruto had already grabbed the Faunus's arm and leg before throwing him aside. Spinning with the motion, Naruto snatched up the hammer-like weapon he'd been hit with just as Ryan got back to his feet, only for the horned teen to get sent crashing back to the ground once again, only it was by his own weapon being thrown at him this time. Before Naruto could press the advantage, however, Naomi had come up behind him.

"Naruto! Stop!" She cried while kicking the back of her brother's knee, forcing him to drop down while she snared him in a head lock. "Calm down! He didn't mean it! He was just protecting me!"

Their words fell on deaf ears at the moment, unfortunately, his eyes glassed over. So lost in the memory was he, Naruto was completely incapable of distinguishing the difference between reality and his memories. Thus, he believed he was actually experiencing the memory in real-time. Gripping Naomi's leg with one hand instead of fighting to get free, Naruto pulled her leg forward, throwing her off balance and making her fall back with him still caught in her grip, but he rolled back with it. Slipping free of the head lock and positioned in a kneeling crouch just above Naomi's head, Naruto drove his fist into her abdomen, knocking the air out of her lungs despite wearing her own matching protective black bodysuit. Before he could once again take advantage of the situation, Ryan's Earth-Breaker slammed into the middle of Naruto's chest at full power, launching the blonde haired Spartan all the way back to the house. Impacting back-first with his head bouncing off the stone, Naruto fell to ground, unconscious.

" _That_ time, I meant it..." Ryan snorted irritably, a trickle of blood coming from his busted lip. Bracing his hammer on his shoulder with one hand, Ryan held his other out to Naomi, helping her to her feet. He didn't take his eyes off Naruto for a second. "You're not too hurt, are you?"

"I'm fine." She all but snapped at her friend as she hastily made her way over to her brother. Kneeling beside him and checking his pulse, Naomi heaved a sigh of relief when she found her brother's heart still beating strong like a war drum. A small, solemn smile tugged at her lips as she stared down at Naruto's unconscious form, gently touching his cheek as her voice dropped below a whisper. "It's okay, Naruto...You're home."

xXx

 _"I knew I shouldn't have taught him how to cover his tracks on a computer."_ Kurama muttered to herself, her DC Chip simply sitting on a computer keyboard with her avatar hovering above her chip. The computer screen flickered from one thing to another too fast for the four girls with her to see what they were as Kurama rummaged through the hospital server. _"Wait a second. A nurse's mobile terminal had been accessed in his room around the same general time he disappeared. Running keystroke analysis program...Hm."_

"Naomi...Namikaze?" Weiss read outloud as she leaned in towards the screen a little. "Who's that?"

 _"According to the hospital records?"_ Kurama questioned rhetorically before continuing. _"His younger sister."_

"What? His sister?" Yang piped in. "He never said anything about having a sister."

"Exactly." Blake responded, leaning back against the wall off to the side with her arms crossed under her bust. Closing her eyes for a moment, Blake looked back up at the others with slightly narrowed eyes, holding one hand out beside her as if weighing something against another. "He never told us _anything_ about himself. We know nothing about him."

"He's still our team mate and our friend." Ruby spoke up, typing something into her Scroll before getting a determined look in her silver eyes. "Either way, we still know he's looking for this Naomi girl. If we find her, our chances of finding Naruto go up."

"That...actually sounds like a smart idea." Weiss remarked, originally intending to shoot the girl's idea down before it made total sense to her. It honestly surprised her a little bit. "Is there a current address?"

"I already have it." Ruby answered, holding out her Scroll to show the map on its screen, a red mark decorating it. "She lives on Patch Island."

"Maybe we can stop in and see Dad after this is over with." Yang teased lightly while nudging Ruby in her side, but it went unacknowledged, making the boisterous blonde pout for a moment. "Let's just get going already. We're wasting time just standing around like this."

 _"First, we need to go to the marina and acquire a boat to reach Patch."_ Kurama spoke up, redirecting everyone's attention back on her as she brought up a few other windows on the computer. _"Acquiring transportation now."_

"Alright, let's go!" Yang cheered while swiping Kurama's DC Chip off the console, the six inch tall holographic image flickering away in the process before being stuffed between her breasts. An audible sigh came from Kurama a moment later.

 _"Don't you have a pocket to put me in?"_ The AI chip grumbled, her chip flickering in time with her words, but she was ignored by the buxom thrill-seeking blonde.

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A/N: Hey, sorry for taking so long and I apologize for it being a little shorter than normal. I hope you all enjoy the new chapter.


	7. Chapter 7

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto, Halo, or RWBY.

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Black Steel

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Chapter Seven

"Is this really necessary?" Naruto growled quietly, his eyes narrowed and aimed at the same duo he'd ended up fighting last night. Standing off to the side, Ryan gave a snort as he leaned back against the wall next to the basement doorway with his arms crossed over his chest, his Earth-Breaker hammer resting beside him.

"After the hell you put us through last night? You're damn right it is." The Faunus growled back, only to get elbowed by Naomi as she walked past him and sat down in a chair in front of Naruto. Said blonde titanic teen was restrained in a solid metal chair with metal clamps anchoring his ankles and wrists while a couple chains bound him a little tighter; Ryan's idea.

"What? Can't take a punch?" Naruto retorted, sounding unchartacteristically spiteful. "And here I thought you could actually fight."

"Grr!" Ryan audibly growled as he grabbed hold of his hammer, only for Naomi to stop him with a steely gaze that made it clear she wasn't going to tolerate any misbehaving. From either of the males in the room.

"Who are you?" Naruto suddenly questioned, turning his gaze to Naomi. "Why... _How_ do I know you?"

"I'm Naomi Namikaze." The red-gold haired bearer of the Hoplite's Shield Semblance responded. Her expressionless visage shifted a moment later, however, her lips quirking into a small solemn small. "I'm your little sister..."

"Sister...?" Naruto wrasped out in a whisper, his shock at the revelation left plainly visible. A moment later, his eyes narrowed once more in a sharp manner. "Bullshit."

xXx

"Any sign of him?" Weiss inquired as they regrouped, having only just reached Patch a couple hours prior. Nearby was the Bullhead Naruto had apparently used to reach the island during the night, but there was no sign of him, the pilot still knocked out and tied up in the cargo hold.

"I saw tracks heading North-West." Blake reported calmly as she stalked closer. While seeming just as cool and level headed as usual on the outside, Blake was actually a mess on the inside. Everything Naruto was doing looked more and more like the behavior of someone that considered everyone around them an enemy, as if they couldn't trust anyone. Sadly, she couldn't find any fault in his logic, if that was how he was truly feeling at the moment. While they had all become decent friends, they hadn't done anything to actually earn the blonde haired brute's trust and respect. Blake vowed to change that as soon as she could. "What about you?"

"Nothing." Yang answered with a shake of her head before nervously fussing with her hair, only to stomp her foot irritably a moment later. "Gah! What the hell is he thinking?! Doesn't he know how worried sick about him we are?!"

"That's just it, Yang. He probably _doesn't_." Blake argued as calmly as she could. "Everything he's doing shows signs of distrust in _everyone_. He's a loner, relying on himself to get things done. Remember the initiation test?"

"Yeah..." Yang mumbled back in reply, recalling how they had all watched him take down two Alpha-class Grimm on his own in only a couple minutes. She then looked at the others, her eyes portraying just how hurt she was at the thoughts going through her head. "Do you...really think he doesn't trust us?"

"I don't like it any more than you do, Yang, but..." Blake hesitated for a moment, thinking back to the numbers that scarred Naruto's chest. She shook her head slightly. "We need to find him. Ruby?"

"We're not that far from that girl's address." Ruby remarked while staring at her Scroll. Looking over the younger girl's shoulder, Weiss gained a flat look before tapping the screen, causing it to zoom out. "Oh...Ooops. I guess we _aren't_ so close to it. Ehehe..."

"Let's just get going. We've got a lot of ground to cover on foot and not a lot of time to do it." Yang 'ordered'.

 _"Wait!"_ Kurama called out, stopping everyone before they could start moving. After being fished out from between Yang's breasts, the AI formed her avatar. _"If you check the Bullhead, there should be a spot where I can connect to the computer systems and control it remotely."_

"Then let's stop wasting time!" Ruby declared with renewed vigor as she raced towards the Bullhead. "Come on!"

xXx

"Wha...What do you mean?" Naomi stammered, having not expected him to react like he did. Naruto didn't break eye contact or even blink as he shifted however little he could, causing the chains to rattle slightly. Ryan scoffed and rolled his eyes.

"You could have killed us." He spat. "You honestly think we'd take any chances with you?"

"You attacked me first." Naruto growled out quietly, turning his cold stare back to the Faunus. "I was just defending myself."

"You were trespassing on private property." Ryan argued back. He really wasn't liking Naruto all that much.

"I was looking for _answers_." Naruto countered. Before things got any worse between them, Naomi got up and started undoing the chains holding her brother in the chair.

"Naomi!" Ryan exclaimed in shock. "You can't seriously-"

"He's my brother, Ryan!" Naomi snapped back at him fiercely. " _This_ was your idea! Not mine!"

Naruto stayed silent as he watched Naomi with a sharp, questioning look in his eyes. Waiting until the last of the bindings were undone, Naruto stood up and rubbed his wrists slightly, still having yet to take his eyes off Naomi. He blatantly ignored how Ryan kept one hand on his weapon as he watched him like a hawk, making sure he didn't try anything foolish. Of all the things he suspected of happening, Naomi's first move was not one of them...

"You're back..." She whispered softly before suddenly hugging her slightly taller brother as tight as she could, burying her face against his shoulder. Caught completely off guard, Naruto simply stared down at the girl, unsure of what to do or say. Things didn't get any better when she started shaking slightly, trying to stop herself from crying. "Y-You're a-alive..."

"...What do you mean?" Naruto asked quietly without moving, not even to politely return the embrace. Sniffling slightly, Naomi stepped back and dried her eyes before looking back at him with a confused look on her face. "Why do you make it sound as if I were dead?"

"You...really don't remember? Do you?" She muttered quietly.

"Remember _what_?" Naruto demanded, though he kept his tone as calm as he could manage, which wasn't much. Unfortunately, his patience was wearing thin after dealing with his dream memories, getting hit by a car, waking up hand-cuffed to a hospital bed, and getting in a fight with his supposed sister and her _friend_. "What don't I remember?!"

"Come on." Naomi urged softly as she gently took one of his hands into her own, lightly tugging on his arm in order to get him to follow her. The pained look in her eyes, though, made him pause. "I'll show you..."

He stayed silent as the girl that claimed to be his sister led him to a door set off to the side that he hadn't noticed earlier. Opening it, Naomi stepped aside to let Naruto enter first. When he got inside, it looked like a normal storage room at first glance, but that was when he noticed something along the back of the room. Recognizing them from his dreams, Naruto slowly took a couple hesitant steps forward, reaching out with one hand to brush his gloved finger tips against the tough glass that boxed in the two sets of armor.

One, a sleek suit of red and black armor that bore gaping tears in the body suit and dented sections of armor plating; his mother's Copperhead suit. The other, his father's Helljumper suit, the cracked helmet's visor smashed out and most of the left leg, both the bodysuit and armor, missing from the display. Set in front of either suit was a small plaque stating the names, birth and death dates, and their most famous quotes with a picture to go with them.

His mother, Kushina, had vibrant red hair, fair skin, and violet eyes. She had only been nearing her fourties when the accident had happened. In the picture, she had such a warm and loving smile on her face. Staring at her plaque with wide eyes, Naruto remained unaware of the two tears that fell from his eyes, which slowly panned over to the other one. Minato. His father. Suddenly, Naruto retracted his hand from the glass as if he had been burned, taking a step back.

"You mean...the dreams...the memories..." Naruto whispered quietly enough that Naomi could barely hear him, his eyes never leaving his parents' pictures. He started shaking slightly, his hands twitching more noticably than anything else. "They were...They were real..."

The dream memories, the foreign ones; they were real? How? How could they be real if he had never lived them? It couldn't be true, though! His mother and father had died in the line of duty during the war with the Covenant! There was no way...but everything said otherwise. His fingers slowly curled into tight fists as the shaking in his arms grew worse, his PTSD sneaking up on him once again as the urge to break something in his over-stressed state rushed to the forefront of his subconsciousness. He barely managed to suppress the instinctual urge to drive his fist through the glass in front of him out of sheer frustration, confusion, and...fear.

 _"Go, Spartan! Get out of here!" Shouted the UNSC marine as he and a dozen others fired from behind cover all throughout the warehouse-like building, the Covenant splinter forces barely being held back by their slowly dwindling suppressive fire. Sierra-419 hesitated for a moment, unsure of what to do; stay and fight with not even a one percent chance of any of them surviving the conflict? Or escape, leaving the soldiers to die for the sake of the mission? "This base is lost! We know that! But we can't afford to lose YOU! We'll hold them off! Ain't that right, men?!"_

 _"HOO-RAH!" Cried the remaining soldiers with such an unbreakable conviction that shocked Sierra-419. These men, these soldiers...Even in the face of certain death, their spirit would not be broken. They would not die in vain..._

Was it all a lie? A dream? Being a part of the UNSC? Being a Spartan? Was it all a fabrication of his own mind to protect him from the trauma of what actually happened? Or was he still dreaming?

 _"How do you feel, son? Any discomfort or pain?" Minato, his father, asked from beside the hospital-esque bed he was currently lying on. Naruto simply laid there, staring up at the ceiling in silence for a few moments as he slowly regained full consciousness and awareness. After a second, he wordlessly shook his head in response. "That's good. The new neural interface should make the synchronization between your nervous system and your suit feel more natural and seamless. Also, until you fully link-up with your suit, you'll have a sort of 'phantom longing', not unlike an amputee suffering from phantom limb; it's normal. Once you get suited up, it'll go away."_

 _"I feel..." Naruto paused for a moment before sitting up in the bed, clad in only his usual black and grey camo pants. Lightly touching the back of his head where the quarter-sized plate of exposed metal from the neural interface was located, Naruto closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Even though he felt that longing his father mentioned, he could almost..._ feel _where his suit was. Along with something else, but he couldn't quite pin-point it just yet. Shaking it off, Naruto opened his eyes and looked up at his father with a blank, unreadable expression on his face; his usual expression. "I feel better than ever."_

 _"I'm glad to hear that." Minato returned with a grin as he clapped a hand down on his son's shoulder. "Now get dressed and meet me in the armory. I've got a little surprise for you."_

 _'What...What the fuck is happening to me?'_ Naruto mentally stammered out numbly, his eyes unfocused as he stared blankly at the ruined visage of his deceased father's helmet. Panic started to set in, making it even harder to hold back the violent storm of emotions spiraling out of control within his head. _'I can't even tell what's real and what's not anymore! WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON?!'_

"Naruto." Naomi spoke up softly while reaching out to gently touch her brother's arm, but that proved to be the wrong move as it shattered what little restraint he still had. Whipping around, Naruto pushed her aside more forcefully than intended as he rushed out the door, knocking Naomi to the floor. Hearing a crash outside, Naomi scrambled back to her feet to find Ryan slumped over in the corner of the basement, most likely from trying to stop Naruto from running before getting thrown aside as if he were weightless. Another noise met her ears, prompting her to sprint for the front door, only to find it forced open and still left ajar from Naruto's hasty escape. "NARUTO!"

 _"FIRE!" Howled the commanding officer of the mobile artillery detachment he had been assigned to. A moment later, the deafening booms of heavy cannons firing thundered throughout the area, but it didn't bother him in the slightest. Nearly four dozen Scorpion tanks fired their main cannons alongside a half dozen Mammoths, their rounds pounding into the flank of a Covenant frigate that hovered over the ruins of what had once been a UNSC city-base. With the second salvo, the frigate's shields fell while several squadrons of Banshees flew straight towards them along with a large number of troop carriers. They knew they were there...and they were not happy. "All forces! Engage!"_

 _Sierra-419 double-checked his SAW and made sure he was fully supplied with ammunition for the light machine gun, the rocket launcher mounted on his back, the Hydra set horizontally along his lower back, and the pistol on the side of his thigh. Putting it behind his right shoulder, the SPARTAN-VI hefted the turret that had previously been mounted on the back of a Warthog prior to being wrecked in the battle they just won. It had not been an easy fight getting to their position for one of the biggest fights they would have in their attempt to retake Reach from the Covenant invasion. It would not be an easy fight ahead of them, either..._

The blonde didn't go far, charging the nearest tree in sight. Pouring all of his pain into it, Naruto smashed his fist into the tree trunk, unaware of the flickering blue-white whisps of Aura gushing out of his body as he did so. Instantly, a six foot section of the tree trunk was reduced to splinters and mulch in a single explosive moment...but Naruto wasn't done. Before the tree could topple, Naruto had grabbed hold of it with his free arm, only to swing it around and smash three more down with another bellowing cry. All the while, his Aura poured out of his body in whispy sapphire flames, driven out of his body by his own pain and frustration.

 _"Naruto, I'd like you to meet your new partner...Kurama. Say hello." Minato remarked as he and Naruto stood in the middle of the elder blonde's private workshop. If Naruto was surprised to see a scarlet holographic image of a woman appear from a projector pad on the desk, he didn't show it._

 _"Hello, Naruto. I am Kurama."_ _The image responded, a small light on the computer beside her flickering in tune with her voice._ _"Do you know what I am?"_

 _"You're...an artificial intelligence program. One made by my father. Right?" Naruto answered slowly with a touch of uncertainty. Kurama smiled slightly and nodded. Naruto then leaned closer to the six inch tall hologram, his eyes narrowed slightly as he scrutinized the bright red figure. "No. You're not...You're more than that."_

 _"Good eye. You're right." Minato commented from behind his son, leaning back against a work bench cluttered with computer pieces and various bits of machinery. His slight smirk became a small frown as he continued, however. "The surgery...didn't quite go as planned. The neural interface was implanted without a problem, but shortly afterwards, your brain activity sky rocketed. Almost to a point that your brain would fried itself. That's when I remembered an old theory I had a long time ago, one that I deemed too dangerous to attempt to actually create back then. To make an AI like Kurama, it requires a digital replication of someone's brain and neural structuring, but the process has a ninety-four percent risk of causing brain damage to the participant..."_

 _"Except with my brain over-clocking itself, so to speak, it cut out the risk of brain damage." Naruto interrupted, still having yet to take his eyes off the holographic image in front of him, which was now smiling at him as if they were proud of him and yet as if they had already known he would figure it out. After a few seconds of silence, Naruto straightened his back and glanced over his shoulder at his father. "Right?"_

 _"Y-Yes, actually...How did you know?" Minato questioned, his surprise clearly displayed on his face. Naruto didn't answer. He simply looked back at the hologram in front of him. He didn't answer him because he himself did not know the answer to that question..._

What the hell was real anymore?! He was a soldier of the UNSC, a Spartan! He was fighting a war against the Covenant! But...in this world, he wasn't! He had a family? A sister? Things just weren't adding up right! None of this should have been possible! Even as he started feeling detached from everything around him, a small part of his mind that retained rational thought watched as he demonlished another tree. Where was this strength coming from? Even with Olympus, he hadn't been able to so effortlessly destroy something without using some kind of weapon. Then, as if a switch had been flipped, the power was gone...

 _"NARUTO! Calm down!" Kushina, his mother called out to him as they stood fully outfitted in their respective armor suits. They had been sparring to help him familiarize himself with his suit's newest enhancements and changes when his Aura surged without warning, nearly sending him into an almost berserk state. Fortunately, he seemed to be focusing on the ground, his fists hammering away at the dense metal flooring of their family's underground training room. She couldn't get near him, lest his now instinctually driven mind register her as a threat and focus that power on her; even as strong as she was, Kushina knew better. Her son's blood was thicker than even her's and Minato's. He was the closest in strength to their originating ancestors than other bearer of the Hoplite's Shield she had ever heard of. "Minato! Get the Armor Lock! He's unlocked the Hoplite's Might!"_

"Naruto!" He heard someone cry out from behind him just as his fist impacted another tree, but his Aura was tapped out, leaving only a fist-sized dent in the thick wood. Before he could turn to see who it was that had called out his name, Naruto felt his vision blur and darken as consciousness left him once again, too heavily drained of his Aura to remain conscious. His last thought was a hopeful wish that he wouldn't be tormented by the dream memories again as he lost consciousness fully, his body colliding with the ground moments later.

His wish would go unfulfilled...

xXx

"PTSD?" Naomi parroted in shock. "That...That would explain his strange behavior, especially with his amnesia added into the mix."

"Yeah. It's been a crazy couple days." Yang murmured from beside the towering red and gold haired young woman, her arms crossed under her large chest as she stared into the room they stood just outside of. The door was open so they could keep an eye on Naruto while Blake sat beside the bed in a chair, reading one of her books even though she spent more time staring at the unconscious blonde than she did the pages to her novel. It didn't take a genius to know what, or rather _who_ , the dark haired girl was thinking about. "I still can't get over him getting hit by a car and still being able to just up and run like this..."

"Wait, he was hit by a car before he got here?!" Naomi nearly demanded out of worry, having not been aware of that fact; then again, it would explain some of the bruising on his face and the healing cut on his forehead that he'd had prior to their little brawl last night. That's when her shock turned to a small humorless smirk as she lightly shook her head. "And he was still able to fight me and Ryan off at the same time...If he had been at full strength, I have no doubt in my mind that he just might have been able to beat the both of us no matter what we tried to do."

"Yeah. He's something else..." Yang mumbled with an almost whistful sounding undertone to her words, still having yet to take her eyes off the black-suited giant slumbering in the room. Taking note of how Yang spoke and the look on the blonde girl's face, Naomi couldn't help smiling faintly; it seemed her brother had found some of the best friends he could ever have. The one in white, the Schnee, was in the room, standing in a corner and leaning back against the wall without once taking her eyes off Naruto. It was obvious she was just as worried about the titan that was her older brother as everyone else, but she tried to maintain her composure; still, her concern was quite obvious if one were to look into the Schnee's icy blue eyes. The group's apparent leader, the youngest of the rag-tag team with the red cloak, was doing her best to stay positive, but it was obvious that she was struggling to keep up such bravado in the face of everything that had happened to their team mate over the past fourty-eight hours; not even the many games on her Scroll helped keep a smile on her face...

"You really do care about him, don't you. You all do." It wasn't a question. Yang could tell that much, but...there's was a knowing tone to Naomi's words that kind of confused the buxom blonde. "He's always been able to take on an army of Grimm single-handedly, but...he needs someone to look after him still, you know? Especially right now."

"Don't worry about him. He's in capable hands." Yang reassured with her usual confident grin as she half-heartedly pumped a fist, cupping her bicep with her other hand as she did so. Naomi couldn't help smiling a little at Yang's confidence, the feeling being a little infectious. "We'll take good care of him for you."

"Thanks..." Naomi answered softly as she leaned back against the wall a little, lightly crossing her arms over her middle.

xXx

 _Shouldering his way through the door in front of him, Naruto found himself standing in the middle of a large circular room made of metal. Looking behind him, what had originally been a simple wooden door that led into the house his family lived in was now a pair of massive metal blast doors, the twin meter-thick barriers of dense armor-metal sealed shut. Hearing an all-too familiar muted-metallic thud, Naruto turned back around to find his original MJOLNIR Mark-VII '445 Super Wide' suit, the one he used to wear back in the UNSC, standing before him while he himself was clad in only his black bodysuit, black and grey camo cargo pants, and his combat boots. The suit had his magnum mounted to the side of its right leg and his combat knife mounted to its left shoulder like always even though he himself had both items set behind his waist at the moment. Hearing the sound of booted feet off to the side, Naruto's eyes went wide; standing there was a copy of himself, dressed similarly to himself, except in a white tank top instead of his bodysuit and they didn't have his facial scar. They, too, bore Anastasia and his combat knife along their lower back._

 _"What is this?" He growled out quietly, his confusion and aggitation slowly burning away at his patience. His unarmored copy simply smirked with a single breath of quiet laughter as he shook his head, his armored copy merely crossing his bulky metal-encased arms over his broad chest._

 _"Figures you'd react that way. It isn't every day someone experiences something like this." His unarmored copy answered with a mildly sarcastic tone to their words, but it wasn't in a condescending manner. Locking eyes with Naruto, the unarmored copy's smirk grew a little as they stuffed their hands in their pocket. "We...are you."_

 _"What?" Naruto grunted out, his tone portraying his intent; if he didn't get any straight-forward answers, he was going to force them out of the pair. No matter what. "What the fuck is that supposed to mean?"_

 _"Okay, let me clarify. I am the you from this world, from Remnant." 'Remnant Naruto' answered while putting a hand on his chest before gesturing towards the armored copy with the same hand a moment later. "Talk, dark, and scary over there is the you from the world you originally came from. In other words? You're currently having an identity crisis right now."_

 _"How can I be having an identity crisis?" Naruto snapped, his fingers curling into tight fists as his temper started warming up. 'UNSC Naruto' uncrossed his arms and anchored his stance a little, his body subtly tensing up as he recognized the slowly growing threat of a physical confrontation. "I know who I am!"_

 _"Yes, yes...but do you know WHICH one you are?" Remnant Naruto countered, his smirk vanishing and his gaze hardening as his tone became sharp and biting with the same ferocity as his own temper. Naruto gave a slight start in response, his eyes widening slightly. "Are you Naruto, the Huntsman of Vale, or are you Sierra-419, the UNSC Spartan?!"_

 _"I...I'm..." Naruto stammered quietly, his stuttered words coming out in a dry-throated whisper as panic tried to creep into his veins. Closing his eyes and giving his head a quick shake, Naruto steeled his resolve. "I don't understand what you are saying! There's only one of me!"_

 _"In one universe, yes! But you crossed dimensions, you fucking idiot!" Remnant Naruto barked out, stomping a half-step forward out of aggitation while UNSC Naruto tensed up a little more in reaction to the sudden aggressive movement. "That Forerunner portal wasn't a teleportation device! It didn't just cross through Time and Space! It crossed through the Multi-verse! By going through that portal, you crossed over into a parallel universe!_ I _was tossed through that same portal when_ you _came out! In FAR more ways than you could possibly imagine, we've traded places! And now, we all stand at a crossroad!"_

 _"Multi-verse? Trading places? A crossroads?!" Naruto snarled back, his confusion and ignorance of what was happening wearing down on his patience even more. "What the fuck is all of that supposed to mean?! That I'm becoming you?!"_

 _"Pfft! Please! You could NEVER be ME!" Remnant Naruto fired back while jabbing his thumb into his chest, only to stab a finger at the armor-clad Spartan off to the side. "You're not even him anymore! You've crossed over cosmic boundaries! You've done the one thing that wasn't supposed to ever happen!"_

 _"...What?" This time, Naruto wasn't as angry as before. He was actually caught between fear...and relief. But why? Glancing between them, Naruto struggled to wrap his head around everything. Seeing as he was calming down, if only slightly and for the moment, Remnant Naruto took a deep breath to calm himself down._

 _"You still don't get it, do you? The memories? The subtle signs and symptoms of PTSD?" Remnant Naruto listed, stepping closer to Naruto as the bodysuit-clad blonde turned his gaze down to the ground, his brain working hard to rationalize everything that was going on before he had a mental breakdown. "You've been getting MY memories and HIS memories. The three of us, we're all one and the same at our cores, but the rest of us individually are different. Take our pistols for example; they're all the same model and design, but they're still different. Mine was made with the technology of Remnant. His was made with the technology of the UNSC. Yours...is a culmination of both. Originally of UNSC design, but reforged with the technology of Remnant. Just like your armor...Remember when you replaced the power supply? How it felt as if you had done it before even though you hadn't?"_

 _"That...That was your memory...wasn't it?" Naruto wrasped out, his eyes jumping up to Remnant Naruto. "I'm...neither one of you...yet still just like you."_

 _"Now you're getting it...Yes, that's right. You USED to be him, but because you went through that portal, we traded places. Because we traded places, we are also trading our memories, our experiences. Even as we speak, I'm going through the same kind of problems you are, only in reverse. I'm getting his memories while you are getting mine." Remnant Naruto went on to explain while UNSC Naruto, ever silent, hesitantly let himself relax as the possibility of a fight breaking out gradually dwindled away. "You can no longer go back to being him, I can no longer go back to the way I used to be, and he will essentially no longer exist in either of our dimensions. Now, You've got to choose. Will you be Naruto, the Spartan? Will you become Naruto, the Huntsman? Or will you become something else entirely?"_

 _"I...I don't...I don't know..." Naruto whispered as he slowly sunk down to his knees, his gaze focusing on nothing as his mind tried to process everything. If he couldn't go back to his home world or go back to being the Spartan he once was, then how could he go back to being a Spartan? If he was not from Remnant, how could he be a Huntsman like his apparent counter-part? If he couldn't be either of them, how...how could he become either of them?_

 _He was broken. At his very core, he was broken beyond repair, but not in the sense most others would assume. Like a sword, he was shattered...but he could be reforged. Like his M6H2 Magnum..._

 _Slowly drawing the pistol from its holster with numb fingers, Naruto stared down at the sidearm with a blank and unreadable expression while Sierra-419 instantly tensed up again, his right hand hovering over his own sidearm in preparation to draw it at a moment's notice. Remnant Naruto, however, remained absolutely calm as he watched Naruto with a cold, but patient look in his eyes. Using his other hand, Naruto slowly pulled the slide back to find a single live round in the firearm's chamber, but it wasn't the same as the singular bullets chambered in either UNSC Naruto's or Remnant Naruto's sidearms._

 _Remnant Naruto's bullet was purely of Remnant design, made with Dust for a propellent and metals native to his homeland. UNSC Naruto's bullet was purely of UNSC design, made with gunpowder for a propellent and metals native to their home world. His, however, was a cross between them. A hybrid. The round was made almost exactly like that of the UNSC's, only with Dust for a propellent. He could no longer be a Spartan and he would never truly be a Huntsman, so...what was he?_

 _Almost automatically, Naruto's gaze slowly rose to stare at UNSC Naruto, his dark violet-sapphire eyes scanning the Spartan's armor, every single detail mirroring his exact memory of his old suit. But it wasn't the same as the one he now had. The differences were subtle and in varying degrees between minor and major, depending on the part or design, but it was still his old armor. However, that wasn't what he was thinking about. For some inexplicable reason, it made him think of what the marines used to call him..._

 _The Black Mountain..._

 _"I'm...not him anymore...and I'll never be you..." Naruto slowly whispered, but although his words were barely audible, they echoed through the wide-open room just loud enough for his two copies to hear perfectly. Turning his gae back down to the gun in his hand, Naruto tightened his grip on the sidearm as his resolve hardened, his mind made up and will reinforced. "I...I am Naruto. Originally forged in the fires of war...and then reforged by the waters of a world that is not my own. I am not a Spartan nor a Huntsman..."_

 _"Then who are you?" Remnant Naruto questioned, though it was intended to be rhetorical. Even still, he was answered as Naruto closed his eyes and tilted his head back slightly, the cold metal of the barrel going unnoticed as it was lightly pressed to his skin just under his chin._

 _"I am Naruto, son of Namikaze Minato and Uzumaki Kushina..." He answered softly, his finger slowly tensing as he applied pressure to the trigger, but not even to fire it. "I am Naruto, the Black Mountain."_

As a flash of white blinded his mind's eye and the resonating explosion of sound silenced all other 'noise' within his mind, Naruto's eyes snapped open, his heart thundering in his chest like an over-revved engine beating to the rhythm of a war drum and chest heaving with deep, quickened breaths. After taking a moment to calm back down, Naruto slowly became aware of his surroundings. Wearing the same attire he'd been wearing in his...dream, Naruto was lying in a bed that he knew was once owned by his counter-parts and was now his, the same concerning the room he currently resided in. It was dark, being the middle of the night, but his eyes kept him from being blinded by the encompassing shadows. It was silent, but...he could still hear something in the room, something that let him know that he wasn't alone in the room.

Looking to the side, he found the person sharing the room with him. Sitting in a chair beside the bed was Weiss Schnee, surprisingly. The heiress was slouched to the side, sound asleep, with her Scroll resting in one of her hands. Quietly getting out of the bed, Naruto gently pulled the device from her slumbering grasp, accidentally turning it back on in the process. As the screen lit up, catching his attention, Naruto paused in his primary objective to look at it. Displayed on it was a picture of their team, something Ruby had _insisted_ on them doing shortly after they all met up to attend the fundraiser the other day.

Looking at the image of himself, Naruto frowned slightly when he noticed just how...cold and distant he looked. Especially in comparison to the spectrum of emotions his team mates displayed. Ruby and Yang were grinning like a couple of lunatics, Blake herself had a small smile on her face even though she was far more reserved than the others, and Weiss...He paused for a moment to glance at the heiress in question for a moment before finally allowing a faint, almost invisible smile to tug at the corners of his lips. Setting the device down on the nightstand, Naruto was careful not to disturb the snowy haired young woman as he gently lifted her from the chair.

Cradled in his arms, the petite girl subconsciously noticed the shift in gravity's pull on her body and stirred slightly, but did nothing more than quietly groan in her sleep and nuzzle her cheek against Naruto's chest before going still once more. It was that very moment when Naruto realized just how tiny Weiss was in comparison to him. He really must seem like a mountain to her and the others with how tall and broad his physique was. Dismissing the thought, Naruto gently laid Weiss down in the bed before pulling the covers over her to keep her warm. Almost immediately, Weiss let out another quiet groan in her sleep as she got comfortable.

Spotting Kurama's DC Chip next to Weiss's Scroll on the nightstand, Naruto picked up the metal-encased card-like item before slipping it into the pouch on his left arm. Taking one last look at the picture on Weiss's Scroll, Naruto let his faint smile grow just a fraction more as he turned and quietly left the room. In the picture, Weiss was standing a little off to the side of the group with her arms stubbornly crossed over her chest and staring off to the side as if refusing to partake, but the almost unnoticable smile on her face and the way she was watching the others out of the corner of her eye showed that she was at least enjoying herself a little bit...

"Mm...Naru...to..." Weiss mumbled out in her sleep as she nuzzled the pillow, unknowingly breathing in his scent as her hand pawed at the bed for a moment, almost as if she were reaching out for something...

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	8. Chapter 8

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto, Halo, or RWBY.

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Black Steel

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Chapter Eight

 _"How are you feeling?"_ Kurama asked cautiously as her scarlet holographic image flickered into existence above her DC Chip. A few minutes after leaving his 'room', Naruto had gone down into his 'father's' private workshop where 'Remnant Naruto's' Kurama had been created and now, nearly half an hour later, he was sitting in the chair at his father's desk, looking through some of the files on late elder blonde's computer.

"I'm fine now, Kurama." Came Naruto's answer and while it seemed like a rather normal response for him, all the way down to his facial expression and tone of voice, Kurama noticed something...off. Something different about him. His response...wasn't as robotic as it once sounded. It seemed far more genuine and...natural. The two fell into silence immediately after for several more minutes as Naruto kept looking through the folders and files on the computer before he finally take a deep breath and sighed quietly. Pushing himself a few inches further from the desk, Naruto stopped messing with the computer to look at his partner's holographic image. "I...want to apologize, Kurama. For how I've been acting. I...have been bottling everything up for far too long and with everything that's happened since coming here, I had finally reached my limit. I couldn't handle the stress I foolish forced upon myself and because of it, I've caused you and the others undue stress in return. I'm sorry, Kurama."

 _"What's...What's gotten into you all of a sudden, Naruto?"_ The AI questioned, staring up at her partner's face with a scrutinizing and mildly suspicious look on her face. Naruto allowed himself to smirk slightly, even though it was devoid of humor. _"You were never so willing to admit something like that before. What's changed?"_

" _I_ changed, Kurama. I had to..." Naruto answered rather cryptically as he thought back on the very strange dream he'd had not that long ago, his response confusing the AI. "There's something you should know, something that I think could explain everything that's been going on with me since we came to this world."

 _"Naruto...What are you talking about?"_ Kurama asked nervously, unsure of whether she wanted to have this particular conversation or not. Once more, a humorless smirk formed on the blonde's face as he leaned back in the chair slightly.

"Kurama..." Naruto began slowly as he locked eyes with his digital partner. "What do you know about interdimensional travel and other theories relevant to it?"

xXx

Later that day, a couple hours after the sun had risen, Naomi stood across from the large viewing window that showed her family's personal training room, leaning back against the wall with her arms crossed over her chest. Inside, Naruto had gathered up most of his old belongings such as his old weapons and a couple old replacement parts for his Olympus suit and various other things. They were set up on a workbench that rose up from the floor at one end of the room while he gradually went from one thing to the next, examining it as if he was remembering them for the first time. She could only assume that it was because of his amnesia and him trying to remember what had been forgotten.

 _'He never did like being left in the dark about things.'_ Naomi thought to herself as she watched him pick up his old Hydra launcher, refamiliarizing himself with it. She let a small, solemn smile cross her face as she watched him. _'I guess some things just don't ever change.'_

"There you are. We were wondering where you went." Ryan spoke up from just down the hall with the four female members of Team RWBYN trailing behind him. "Naruto's gone missing again."

"He's not missing." Naomi answered without glancing at the others, her eyes firmly locked on her brother. Nodding her head slightly towards the viewing window, the others were inclined to look over before they all took notice of him in the large, circular training room. The four young women that were her brother's team mates and friends were relieved to find out that he hadn't disappeared on them again. Smiling a little more, Naomi pushed off the wall and started heading back towards the exit where the group of five had just come from, ushering everyone to go with her. "Come on. Let's leave him alone for a little bit. He's trying to remember what he's forgotten and I think it's best if we leave him be for right now."

Ruby, Yang, Blake, and Weiss hesitated for a few moments before following after her and Ryan. Out of the four of them, however, it took Weiss a few seconds longer to walk away, her thoughts currently circling around the towering blonde and the fact that she had woken up in the bed when she remembered drifting off in the chair last night. It had her confused, emotionally...and she didn't know how to feel about it all or what to think of it. Maybe she'll talk with him about it later when she got a chance...

"Hmm...Same design as the UNSC's model and everything. Only better." Naruto mumbled in outspoken thought as he pressed the Hydra's stock into his shoulder and peered through the mini-rocket launcher's holographic targeting sight. The weapon was a few pounds lighter than the model he had used back in the UNSC, it had twice the ammo capacity with smaller and more compact rounds, the targeting sight was about sixty to seventy percent more accurate, and the 'test fire' mode showed that it had a thirty to fourty percent quicker lock-on than the one from his home world. Also, judging from some of the files on his father's computer that he had glanced through, it was easily customizable and there had even been blueprints for potential compact models that could be integrated with their armor suits among a few other weapon types. They just hadn't been built yet or even confirmed on being able to work or not.

 _"So...what do you plan on telling the others?"_ Kurama finally asked, her chip still situated in the pouch on Naruto's left bicep. Sighing as he set the weapon down, Naruto lightly ran his hand over the SAW light machine gun previously owned by his interdimensional counter-part.

"Naomi and the others believe that I have amnesia. I think that, for now, it is for the best that they continue to think that." Naruto answered quietly as he picked up the shotgun that was amongst the weapons he had scrounged up earlier. Looking it over for a few moments, he finally shouldered the weapon to stare down the sights as he continued with his response. "I don't think they would believe the truth behind everything. I barely believe it myself and I'm the one that's actually experiencing it...No, I don't think I'll be telling them the truth for quite some time."

 _"If you say so, Naruto..."_ Kurama returned softly, yet a little hesitantly. While they had been in the workshop, she had finally admitted to having known about certain things since the beginning and while Naruto hadn't exactly been pleased to find out that she had been withholding critical information the whole time, he himself had admitted that it might have been for the best in the end. If he had found out before his 'spiritual awakening', so to speak, he might not have been so calm about it. As Naruto continued going through the items he had found, Kurama finally thought about something. _"Hey, Naruto...Do you think there are any schematics on the original suit your...'other you' had? They might help solve some of the issues we've been encountering with some of your projects."_

"Hm." Naruto hummed thoughtfully as he lowered the DMR in his hands, having been looking through its scope just as Kurama brought up the subject. "Now that you mention it, I think there are. There might even be a few prototypes and blueprints for upgrades stashed somewhere around here, too."

Setting the semi-automatic rifle back down on the table, Naruto immediately turned on his heel and left the training room, heading back to his father's workshop. His computer was linked with everything in the house and the underground facility beneath it. If there really were design schematics on his counter-part's suit, they'd be on his father's computer...

xXx

 _"Thank you for letting me know, Miss Rose."_ Ozpin finally said after a few moments of silence, having just been given a brief summarization of what had happened over the past couple days by Team RWBYN's leader. _"While I would have appreciated a call sooner, it is better late than never. I'll arrange for your team's retrieval. The Bullhead should arrive within the next half hour. One last thing, Miss Rose. I want to see the five of you in my office the moment you arrive. We have much to discuss concerning your collective actions over the past two days."_

"Yes, sir." The youngest member of Beacon Academy returned meekly. As she and the silver haired Headmaster ended the communication a few moments later, Ruby turned around to find Naruto exiting his sister's home with a rather large and heavy looking black duffle bag hanging off his left shoulder by its lone strap. Having a keen eye for details and estimations as a speedy little sharpshooter, Ruby could immediately tell that the bag easily weighed a couple hundred pounds at the very least and yet the titanic blonde carried it as if it weighed nothing to him; just how strong was he? "Professor Ozpin's going to send someone to pick us up. They should be here soon."

"That is for the best, I believe." Naruto answered quietly as he came to a stop beside the petite fifteen year old girl, staring off into the distance out of contemplation as the mid-afternoon sun bore down on them from above. Thankfully, the weather was still transitioning from the last days of winter into the beginning of spring, so it wasn't too hot. Without turning his gaze towards her, Naruto took a slow breath before speaking up again a few seconds later. "I have already spoken with the others individually, but I want to apologize to you the most, Ruby. I have caused you all quite a bit of trouble these past couple days. It will no doubt cause more problems for us as a whole, but it does not change the fact that my actions will reflect poorly on everyone, but none so much as you, Ruby, being the leader of this team. For that, I can not apologize enough..."

"I-It's okay, Naruto. I'm sure it's nothing we can't handle together as a team." Ruby hesitantly dismissed, smiling a little awkwardly as she waved off his concerns. Naruto simply smiled faintly at her humility and humbleness; Ozpin really did make the right choice when it came to appointing their team leader. Although ignorant and naive to a lot of things, Ruby was a pure-hearted and innocent soul. Loyal to a fault, always seeing the good in people no matter what, always striving to keep the peace and resolve any problems within the team. While she might be young, a 'child' in the eyes of some, Ruby was a natural-born leader, whether she knew it or not. "Besides...What are friends for if we aren't there to help each other out?"

"Hm. Fair point." Naruto mumbled in agreement as he stared off into the dense woodlands surrounding the home his...sister...lived in. While it was a couple miles outside of Patch's main settlement, the property was well secured with defense systems such as automated turrets in most areas designed to exclusively target Grimm and Grimm alone while an uncountable number of motion sensors and security cameras scattered all throughout the property vigilantly watched for anything else. From the main security control inside the house, Naomi would be able to see anyone or anything that set foot on the property so that she could react accordingly. If she so chose, she could manually reset the automated turrets to target anything and everything that moved within their firing range.

It had been because of those very same security measures that she and Ryan had known he had been coming the other night, giving them the chance to ambush him.

"Sooo...What's in the bag?" Ruby, ever so curious, asked as she eyed the duffle bag he was carrying. Resting a hand on top of it, Naruto glanced down at the tiny young woman with a blank expression before smirking a little bit and looking back off into the distance.

"Just some old belongings that I want to take back to Beacon with me." The blonde haired giant answered vaguely. In truth, he had gathered several of the weapons and a few other devices from his...family's armory. Sure, it would be simple to remake his own back at Beacon, but his would be more heavily influenced by UNSC design while the ones he had collected were purely of Remnant make. Not only that, but he also had a couple portable hard drives filled with information he had found in the main computer data base earlier that morning. Hopefully, he'd be able to make some progress with his little projects once they were back at Beacon. "They might help trigger a memory later on when I'm not so preoccupied."

"True..." Ruby mumbled back, though she honestly didn't have much of an idea of what he was talking about. Yeah, he had amnesia and sometimes old momentos could help those lost memories resurface, but she didn't understand how they would help him later on if they weren't having much of an effect, if any at all, already. Silence fell over the two for a few minutes as they simply stood there before Ruby eventually had enough of the quiet, giving in to the urge to question her friend and team mate some more. "Have you...remembered anything from your past?"

"A few things. Most of what I can recall is vague and uncertain, bringing only more questions without answers. It is...strange, knowing that I have family, but not having any substantial memory of them other than the knowledge that they exist. It is something that will take some time getting used to." Naruto internally grimaced without showing anything on the outside as the words left his mouth. While he wasn't exactly lying to the girl, or the others, he still wasn't telling the truth either. However, it was for the best. If he told them the truth, that he had actually come from a different dimension and had switched places with the real Naruto that came from the world of Remnant, they would believe he was insane, spouting madness and nonsense. Perhaps one day he could tell them the truth without the risk of breaking or damaging the bonds he had formed with the four girls he was teamed up with. _'Since when did you start caring about bonds, Naruto?'_

"Well, don't give up, Naruto." Ruby reassured with a warm, confident smile as she looked up at him. "I have faith that it'll all come back to you eventually. You just gotta keep going forward and not let anything stop you from regaining your memories. Just remember that you're not alone anymore. We're all here for you..."

"Yeah..." Naruto whispered under his breath while glancing back over his shoulder to find the three remaining members of their team standing a few yards away from them, Naomi and Ryan standing amongst them.

Yang gave him a cheeky grin and a thumb's up, Blake nodded her head in agreement with Ruby's declaration while maintaining her usual cool demeanor, and Weiss stood a little straighter while her pale blue eyes portrayed her full support and trust in him. Clad in her personal suit of armor that Naruto recognized as a near-exact duplicate of the UNSC's 'Wetwork' MJOLNIR model was Naomi, the armor plating having been primarily painted a solid pitch black that seamlessly blended in with her pitch black bodysuit while a number of dull bubblegum pink stripe-like designs cut through the obsidian metal all across her armored frame. Naomi kept her sapphire-lensed helmet cradled under her left arm as she gave him a kind, loving smile that communicated her hope to one day have her brother returned to her in his entirety. Although a little reluctant to be there due to him holding a bit of a grudge against Naruto because of their fight the other day, even Ryan gave him a curt nod of agreement and to show his respect for him as a skilled fighter with his muscular arms stubbornly crossed over his wide chest, his battle hammer set on his back like always.

"I guess you're right." He whispered under his breath as he faced forward again, his dark indigo eyes easily spotting the distant silhouette of a Bullhead heading straight towards them from the direction of Vale...

xXx

 _"You might not remember everything, if anything at all, but I want you to know that you're still loved and to remember that you'll always have a place to call home. Take care of yourself, Big Brother, and make sure to stay in touch. Your Little Sister, Naomi Namikaze."_

Naruto flipped the photo back over and stared at the image depicted on its surface, studying every little detail on it. Naomi had given it to him as they said their good-byes when the Bullhead had arrived. It was a picture of him, Naomi, and their parents from a little over a year ago, when they had all gone to the same fundraiser he and his team had gone to just a handful of days ago. Below her hand-written message was her personal Scroll number and the exact address to the house. It had been almost a week since that day and Team RWBYN had been confined to the campus grounds for the next month with restricted priviledges because of everything that had transpired along with mandatory 'campus community service' twice a week for the same amount of time, but that was about it.

Glynda Goodwitch had pressed for a stricter punishment, considering the amount of chaos that had been created in such a relatively short amount of time, but Ozpin had been strangely understanding of everything Naruto had been going through and had made sure that they weren't disciplined too harshly for the fiasco the cobalt eyed juggernaut had unintentionally caused. The odd man had even allowed Naruto to continue with his monthly requests of resources for his personal projects, something that confused him a little bit and made him rather suspicious of the Headmaster's intentions. Still, he would make do with what he had and see that his punishment was completed without error; he was a 'good soldier', after all.

 _'You're not a soldier anymore, Naruto. You haven't been for a long time now.'_ Naruto thought to himself in admonishment as he closed his eyes and sighed, bowing his head slightly. Placing the photo back in his locker, Naruto grabbed his sheathed combat knife before shutting the door to the metal obelisk and heading back towards the adjacent room his current class was being held; combat instruction. Just as he mounted his combat knife along his lower back as he neared the doorway that led into the corridor connecting the locker room with the sparring arena, Naruto froze in his tracks, his unflinching gaze locked on to the figure leaning against the wall next to the open doorway.

'Remnant Naruto' stood there, possessing the same blank and unreadable expression on his face as Naruto himself, with his left hand stuffed in his pocket casually and a booted foot propped against the wall he was currently leaning against. The white tank top-clad phantom of his other self was lazily and repeatedly tossing his own combat knife into the air by the tip of the blade with his right hand before effortlessly catching it by the very tip every time. Although he knew the near-identical clone of himself to be a figment of his imagination, the two dopplegangers maintained eye contact for nearly a full two minutes in total silence before Naruto finally broke eye contact and continued on his way, the spectre vanishing into thin air in the process and leaving the locker room completely empty.

Just as it had been for the better part of the last three hours with the sole exception being Naruto's recent and brief visitation...

It had been happening every so often since he'd had that dream. Sometimes it was silent momentary encounters like he'd just had and sometimes he was stuck listening to the hallucination talking away; the topics weren't always easy on his ears and often pushed the limits of his patience, sanity, and temper. There were also occassions where he would spot his other 'reflection', the hulking mass of obsidian metal that was Sierra-419 as the Spartan stood in a corner of a room or across hallways, just silently watching him. It was all quite unnerving and it was slowly gnawing away at what little sanity he felt that he had left.

As he made his way down the hallway with a slow, measured gait, Naruto took a deep breath to settle his mildly rattled nerves, never once showing any outward sign of his gradually destabilizing mental state. Because of the dream he'd had while on Patch a week ago, he'd disposed of his original emblem, the Forerunner Reclaimer symbol, and replaced it with a stylized mountain design that had been split down the middle from peak to base by a single jagged crack; the first step he had taken to distance himself from Remnant Naruto and Sierra-419 and establish his 'new identity' as the Black Mountain.

 _"It happened again, didn't it..."_ Kurama's soft-spoken voice inquired from the storage pouch on the left bicep of his protective bodysuit, her words coming out as a statement and not a question despite how she worded it. Naruto didn't answer. He didn't need to. When it had first happened, he had asked Kurama if she saw the phantasms as well. When it was confirmed that she hadn't, Naruto's subconscious fears had been confirmed as well; he was slowly losing his mind. Even though he'd had a moment of clarity and lucidity because of that strange dream a week ago, it had not done anything to actually fix him. It had merely pointed out that he did indeed have a problem, that he was broken on the inside. Now, he was stuck at metaphorical 'dead end', having absolutely no idea or the slightest clue as to how he should fix himself. It did not help that now that he was consciously aware of his psychological issues, he couldn't stop thinking about it, which in turn, only made him all the more anxious and unsettled, though he kept it expertly hidden from everyone around him. _"Naruto...You need to get help. This can't keep going on much longer."_

"I'll be fine, Kurama." Naruto argued quietly and stoicly even though he knew it to be a lie. A blatant and poorly thought-up lie, at that. He wasn't 'fine', not in the slightest, and it wasn't going to change for a good long while. "It'll pass on its own. I just need to give it time."

 _"Damn it, Naruto! Now's not the time to get bullheaded and stubborn!"_ Kurama snapped fiercely, her originally soft and worried tone becoming sharp and biting as she started getting angry with her partner. _"You're not fine and it's not going to just go away on its own! You know that just as well as I do!"_

"We're not having this conversation right now." Naruto growled as they reached the double doors at the end of the hall. Having long since established a rule of 'silence' between each other when in the presence of others, Kurama immediately went quiet as Naruto reached for the doors. Thankful for the silence, Naruto forced aside the thoughts of his slowly dwindling rationallity in favor of focusing on what he was originally doing while pushing the twin doors open. Stepping out into the wide-open chamber, Naruto glanced over to see Glynda standing off to the side of the small circular arena stage with a clipboard-sized Scroll cradled in the crook of her left arm. With a fifteen foot radius 'buffer zone' surrounding the perimeter of the arena stage, the ten foot tall circular wall that sat just outside of that buffer zone gave way to a hundred or so seats arranged in a colliseum-like manner with the arena stage situated in the very center of it all.

Crossing the fifteen foot gap between the doors and the stage, Naruto smoothly ascended the six meager steps that led up to the metal dias that made up the arena stage, his gaze focusing on his given opponent for the day's demonstrational sparring match. Yatsuhashi Daichi. A Second-year student and the only other student currently attending Beacon Academy that not only stood eye-to-eye with him, but had the potential to match him in physical strength. Having done some research on his 'family's' Semblance, Hoplite's Shield, which was Remnant's equivalent to the UNSC's Spartans, Naruto guessed that the seven foot tall young man was a carrier and bearer of the Hoplite's Shield genes. Rather strong genes, at that.

"Are both participants ready?" Glynda inquired from her spot, her voice amplified by her Scroll to act as a microphone that was linked with the number of speakers scattered all throughout the colliseum-esque 'classroom' so that everyone heard her clearly.

"Are you sure you wish to fight me without a weapon?" Yatsuhashi asked as he pulled his giant sword from behind his back instead of immediately answering their instructor and momentary proctor for the match. Naruto simply narrowed his eyes ever so slightly while drawing his combat knife with his right hand in a reverse-grip, hunkering down into a loose stance that went to a technically formless and brutal closer-quarters fighting style he had been taught back in the UNSC during his training post-augmentations. While unable to use it while wearing his Olympus suit, it was a fighting style that was designed to be unpredictable and reactionary, mixing together bits and pieces from various other pre-existing fighting styles to make it incredibly difficult to counter. "I see. Very well then. I can not promise that you will not be injured during our match. Professor Goodwitch; I'm ready."

"And you, Mr. Uzumaki?" Glynda asked while turning her eyes towards Naruto as his eyes narrowed a fraction more, his grip tightening around the combat knife's handle.

"Ready..." Naruto answered with a mild edge to his tone of voice. Glynda frowned for a moment before nodding nonetheless and stepping away from the arena. A moment later, the lights all around the room's seating area dimmed to nothingness, leaving only the stage and its two occupants illuminated by the spot lights on the ceiling that were aimed straight down on top of them. Above them, a handful of large television screens blinked to life, each one showing a mirror-image of the same thing; a profile picture for either towering student with a green bar directly below their respectful photos that showed their current 'battle ready' Aura levels, looking much like health bars from a video game.

"Before the match starts, I will review the rules for both of you." Glynda's voice echoed from within the darkness all around them as they both stared each other down, neither showing any substantial amount of emotion nor budging an inch from their starting stances. "Both contestants will fight until one of you is either knocked unconscious, has been declared unable to continue the match by myself, their Aura levels have fallen into the red zone, or I have called an end to the match for whatever reason I deem fitting. Other than that, there are no limitations or restrictions to fighting techniques for this match; just keep in mind that this is a spar, not a fight to the death. Now...Begin!"

With Glynda's explanation finished and her declaration made, Yatsuhashi was the first to move, rushing straight at Naruto as he raised his sword for a crushing downward swing. Spinning around the attack and the weapon's wielder, Naruto countered with a solid round kick to Yatsuhashi's unguarded and exposed right side, sending him sliding sideways for a few feet from the force behind it without knocking him down. Pushing through the pain and using his Aura to numb the area where he'd been hit, Yatsuhashi regained his footing and balance before swinging back around with a wide horizontal slash. Eyes widening slightly, Naruto leaned back and let himself fall to the ground, the wide-set and heavy brass-colored blade of his opponent's sword missing him by only a few inches as it sliced through the air above his torso.

Rolling backwards into a three-point crouch, Naruto lunged forward as he kicked off the ground to quickly invade Yatsuhashi's now wide open guard with a rising knee strike aimed at his solar plexus. Barely able to react in time, Yatsuhashi positioned his free arm in the way of the attack to block with his armored bracer, the initial impact of Naruto's knee hitting his hastily raised guard being enough to knock Yatsuhashi off his feet. Landing flat on his back a few yards away from where he'd been thrown back, Yatsuhashi wheezed and coughed for a couple seconds from the air getting knocked out of his lungs by a combination of the partly blocked knee strike and the landing. A moment later, however, he was forced to roll out of the way as Naruto brought his booted left foot down on the ground with a punishing stomp that would have hit him in the stomach had he not moved, the resulting crash of sound echoing throughout the whole chamber while a couple cracks had been put into the floor from the power behind it.

 _'He is much stronger than he appears.'_ The green-clad swordsman thought warily as he shook his left arm out, trying to regain feeling in the forelimb while simultaneously blocking out the throbbing ache in his bones from blocking Naruto's knee. Deciding to switch to a more defensive strategy, Yatsuhashi brandished his giant sword again in order to put something between him and his opponent for the time being while keeping it positioned just right for either a quick counter-attack, to put some more distance between them if he has to, or to use the broadside of his weapon as a shield, if need be. That was when he took note of how Naruto was waiting for him to recover a little bit from where he'd been a moment ago, even though it had only taken the sode-wearing teen a few seconds to regain most of the feeling and use out of his left forearm. _'He has a sense of honor, at least, though I have a feeling that it is only because we are sparring and not actually fighting.'_

Without the tiniest shred of hesitation or the faintest of warnings, Naruto pushed the offensive once more. Bracing his left hand against the dull back edge of his sword, Yatsuhashi brought his sword down at an angle, mostly in an attempt to force Naruto into retreating to put more space between them, but it failed when Naruto brought up his combat knife to block and then parry the much larger and heavier bladed weapon without being slowed down or staggered in the slightest. Shoving the sword back and throwing Yatsuhashi off balance as he spun around him again, Naruto lashed out with a shin kick to the dark haired teen's lower right leg, further disrupting Yatsuhashi's balance and footing.

Following through with the spin, Naruto hooked his left arm around Yatsuhashi's neck before hip tossing him, slamming the upperclassman on the ground back first with enough force to crack and partially shatter the stone-like flooring of the arena dias. Without letting up, Naruto kicked off the ground while continuing to spin, effectively transitioning into a horizontal flip not unlike a 'barrel roll', only to come down with a heel drop kick to Yatsuhashi's mid-section that was made even stronger than usual due to the amount of momentum he had built up from spinning so much and a portion of his full weight being added into the mix.

"Gah!" Yatsuhashi hacked out as his body involuntarily tried curling in on itself from the blow, his fingers losing their grip on his sword as his Aura visibly flickered over his body mid-impact as his limit was reached. Rolling backwards and popping back up to his feet, Naruto sheathed his combat knife just moments before the lights started turning back on.

"Match over! Winner: Naruto Uzumaki!" Glynda declared as she made her way to the stage, the Aura gauge under Yatsuhashi's picture rapidly flashing red as it reached the predetermined cut-off point that would have marked the end of the spar regardless of whether Yatsuhashi could still fight or not. They were a school, after all, and had to ensure that all of their students were well cared for and not put in unnecessary danger or needlessly harmed. Just as she reached the top of the short stack of stairs, Glynda was a little surprised, yet pleased to witness Naruto offering Yatsuhashi a hand before pulling him up to his feet without much of a problem, throwing one of the upperclassman's arms across his shoulders before starting to help him off of the dias, his free hand gripping the handle to Yatsuhashi's sword as he carried it along with them. "Mr. Uzumaki. Please assist Mr. Daichi to the clinic."

"Yes, ma'am." Naruto answered before doing as instructed, even though he had intended to do just that whether she had told him to or not. As they left the arena-like classroom and started making their way down the long and empty corridors that spanned the entirety of Beacon Academy, Yatsuhashi glanced at Naruto's face to find it just as expressionless as usual, but the gleam in the blonde's eye...was that guilt he saw? Although he hadn't said anything, Yatsuhashi recieved an answer to his unspoken question after a few minutes of silent walking. "I'm...sorry. I didn't mean to take it that far."

"What do you...mean by that?" Yatsuhashi wrasped out, wincing painfully halfway through his question as he used Naruto for support, finding it quite painful to breath at the moment.

"I was already upset before the match started and it only got worse once the match began. I lost control of my temper and I stopped holding back towards the end of the fight." Naruto explained without once looking at the teen he was half-carrying to the clinic for medical attention. "At the very least, I cracked at least two of your ribs with that last kick."

"...Things happen all the time. Sometimes they are good...sometimes they are bad." Yatsuhashi pointed out as they grew close to the clinic. "There was no way...you could have known that this...would have happened. What's done is done. All there is to do now...is to accept that you made...a mistake and to try not to make...that same mistake a second time."

"Hmph. Getting a little too philosophical about this, don't you think?" Naruto retorted in a vaguely noticable playful tone of voice, smirking slightly as he led Yatsuhashi through the clinic's entrance. "All I did was just stop pulling my punches because I was upset."

"Heh...True." Yatsuhashi let out a quick little laugh as he agreed, only to regret doing such as he cringed in pain from his rib cage hurting. Oh, well. At least now he would be excused from his classes for the next few days to a week or two, depending on how long it took him to heal and recover. As Naruto eased him down into a chair and propped his sword against the wall beside him, Yatsuhashi gave the blonde a smirk of his own before holding his hand out to the black-clad blonde. Glancing from the offered hand to Yatsuhashi for a moment, Naruto promptly clashed forearms with the swordsman before wordlessly nodding his head out of respect for him. "Thanks for the help...and that was one hell of a match, Uzumaki. Maybe one day we could have a rematch. Preferably _without_ a trip to the clinic."

"Maybe. I just hope I didn't hurt you too badly. Take care, Yatsuhashi." Naruto said in return before leaving the Second-year student in the care of the school's well-funded and well-trained clinical staff, heading back to class to continue with the day's lessons. As he walked down the hall, Naruto blatantly ignored the fact that he was no longer walking alone despite the hallway being completely devoid of people, save for himself...and the phantom of his armored past-self, Sierra-419.

xXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXx


End file.
